Forget your fears
by MightyMiget
Summary: A man lying in a green casket. The boy scared of being alone. That girl who wants to be loved. Come together players; the fate of the world is in your hands. Will you let it drown? **6/14/16 On hold until I find a beta reader
1. Chapter 1: Hammer and Tongs

**1: Hammer and Tongs**

 **Chapter Summary: The wars for land and resources following Second Impact led the UN to charge the Nerv organization to create supersoldiers to quell future conflicts. Fourteen years later and the wars are long past. John-117 is the only surviving Spartan.**

 _ **"I saw my brothers slain. Few understand the pain, few can hear my cry." — Adolf Hitler**_

From the sea came life. Isn't it fitting that the sea take life back?

Second Impact: a force equivalent to 18 billion megatons of TNT being detonated at once. It vaporized the Antarctic ice caps, flooding the world oceans with untold gallons blue-green water and molten amber LCL blood. We can only guess at how many people died and were not buried, save for their cities crashing around their cooling corpses.

From the sea came monstrous waves hundreds of meters tall that swallowed up the land and drowned the Southern Hemisphere with tainted water. Across the globe sea levels rose around seventy meters. Every single coastal city in the world was given the Atlantis treatment and would never again recover. The year was 2000 and it seemed that the doomsday predictions would be fulfilled by the ink-blue tides of the swelling ocean instead of computer malfunctions. Two billion people died that fateful day.

Worse than the destruction wrought by nature against man was the destruction wrought by man against man. After the waves came more waves; not of water but of war. Again and again the surviving countries scrambled amongst flooded plains strewn with the soaked ash and bones of the old world. The surviving countries threw their soldiers and bombs and chemicals at each other, seeking gain and glory through exploitation of the weakness caused by the Second Impact. Men and women were torn asunder by violent explosions launched from countries hundreds of miles away by shadowy military agents who thought nothing or little of the _human_ cost of their actions. Children choked on clouds of sickly pale poison gases and died in the streets by the millions. Even the rats and insects of the world would not touch these corpses; for they were tainted by the evil of man. Soldiers fought to kill and killed only to die soon after.

Despite these tragedies man lived and loved and laughed madly on through the chaos of the times. Is this not what man was meant for? To live on through hardship and survive? The survivors of the winds and waves and rains and wars were scarred for sure; but did they not live? They lived and they lived and they lived despite flood, against the bombs and bullets, lived through the fogs of nerve gases and vesicant agents.

Man's arduous struggle finally came to an end on the Day of Love through the Valentine's day Treaty of 2001. A year of non-stop combat and disaster and adjusting to the brave new world wrought by man's hubris and greed and aspirations for Godhood. In the light of the tragedies of existence that occurred during that fatal one year stretch between Second Impact and the Day of Love; man finally found it to be in his best interest to end war. The real terror was _how_ they chose to put an end to war.

Seventy-five children from across the world were kidnapped from their parents. In their place clones of the Chosen were planted so as not to startle their guardians. Within the year many flash-clones died of medical complications as a result of cloning a human being and artificially aging them three years, putting an end to their deceptive existence. There were seventy-five unnecessary funerals in the year 2001.

These children, future Spartans, would be taken and trained and surgically modified until they were _warcasters_. Magicians on the battlefield capable of making the impossible happen on a regular basis. More precise and deadly than any other soldier or weapon available to man; they would be the ultimate deterrent to war…

The seventy-five Chosen were taken to Mombasa-2. Here the children grew into something more than human...

* * *

"There is an ancient saying, 'the beginning of wisdom is innocence.' So where do we begin to create the ultimate warrior?" Dr. Catherine Halsey paused for a moment in her address to the UN representatives, "we must begin with innocence."

Silence reigned supreme in the UN assembly room. The silver film of nothingness birthed by Halsey's dramatic methodology proposed and the contemplation of the UN representatives was broken when China stood and began to clap in support of the good doctor's solution to war. Slowly the other representatives voiced their assent. Halsey turned to see the men and women representing the people of the world and smiled.

And thus began the Spartan II program.

* * *

In an underground room of the FLEETCOM Military complex, 75 children sat in a cold grey amphitheatre. They had been selected for their genetic superiority, strength, and drive to succeed. They were the best; Halsey would make them _better_.

"... This is the nature of war! The truest form of divination, man puts his life on the line and stands to win the world. The ultimate gamble; and when it pays off, man can't help but bet again and again and again..."

The kids tried to listen to the words of Franklin Mendez, who would be the man in charge of their training as Spartans. The children wore thin athletic clothing that provided no relief from the stinging cold stone floor they sat on. The hum of air conditioning was accompanied by a frosty wind that caused exhalations to rise up in whorls of hot dreams and cold smoke.

"... But for one man to bet and gain everything, another must bet and _lose_ everything. This is the tragedy of war…"

Chief Petty Officer Mendez paused his speech and made eye contact with his mostly reluctant charges. Pulled from their homes against their will, they did not yet understand the grandness and nobility of the cause they were being dedicated and sacrificed to.

"You children are meant to be the end of this fruitless gambling! Although you're too young to understand; it will become apparent to you that the sacrifices you make will what keeps the peace in the world. From this day on, you are Spartans."

Mendez looked around once more at the child-soldiers gathered. The majority of them were shivering or on the verge of tears, unsurprising since the recruits _were_ three year olds newly taken from their parents. There was just one exception… A boy, unlike the rest of his peers, was sitting ramrod straight. Nothing out of the ordinary; only a smattering of freckles and a small gap between his front two teeth. Despite the coldness of the room, one boy did not shiver or chatter his teeth.

"Boy, what's your name?"

The child in question stood up to address his superior officer. In his eyes were unwavering courage and already Mendez could tell that this boy was ready to fight, that this boy would give his everything for the human race.

"I'm John."

The year was 2001 and a legend was in the making.

* * *

Eleven years later Dr. Halsey, CPO Mendez, and John were standing in the rain. Thirty four graves lay in front of the trio.

"It's okay to cry John," Halsey said softly, "everyone hurts sometimes. Even Spartans can feel."

God knows how long she had cried for the dead children in front of her.

Mendez stood silently looking over the graves, neither crying nor saying anything. The past eleven years had crept up on him so quickly… Every soldier either buried in the ground or screaming as the pain of the failed bone and eye and muscle augmentations burned their marks into the young bodies had become part of his family. He had genuinely grown to care about these Spartans— somewhat foolishly, grown attached to them.

Despite the dead and maimed, Mendez and Halsey, father and mother figures to these Spartans still had John. John who was always leading the group through their survival exercises and trainings. He who was brave and swift and strong and above all: willing to sacrifice for the good of his teammates, his _family_. John was all that was left.

The teenager stepped forward out from between Halsey and Mendez out of the umbrellas that shielded them from the rain. His head was bowed and the rain ran through his short brown hair into his eyes and down his face. Maybe he cried, maybe he didn't.

Why was it he that was able to survive these surgeries when his friends— no, brothers and sisters, hadn't been able to? He recalled one of the promises that he had made to his fellow warriors as they did a survival test in the middle of the Amazon wilderness:

" _No one's getting left behind. We're going to find a way to get us all out."_

He had promised never to leave a man behind. But now he was standing there alone; the sole survivor of the ultimately failed Spartan program.

* * *

"Sierra-117, meet your new employer Mr. Gendo Ikari," Halsey gestured to the man sitting at a desk on the far side of the office they were in, "Mr. Ikari, this is John." The doctor smiled warmly at her charge and jerked her head to one side to communicate to the soldier that he was to greet the commander. John wasn't too good at understanding social conventions.

The year was 2014 and the last Spartan was sixteen years old. He stood six and a half feet tall in military green MJOLNIR Mark IV Assault armor. The hiss of pneumatics went off as the Spartan took his helmet off. Nestling the object under his arm, the supersoldier strode towards Gendo with carefully measured strides.

"It's a pleasure, sir." The voice was calm and controlled, a hint of youth tempered by maturity and discipline and gravel. The tall boy offered a handshake to his new superior. Gendo unraveled his tangled fingers stood from his seat and shook John's hand. The scene was strange, John was over 20 years younger than the Nerv commander, but stood over half a foot taller.

After the commander had taken his seat again, he stared at his new employee for a good while. An icy stare that most of Nerv's employees swore could freeze Hell over. John bore that stare easily and waited for the interview to continue.

"What purpose will you serve here, Sierra-117?" The commander's fingers drummed together in a carefully practiced rhythm. Gendo was naturally curious of the Spartan's abilities; he had known of the existence of the Spartan II program for quite some time and the stories that had circulated about John-117.

"Anything and everything asked of me, I will fulfill to the best of my abilities, sir." John's response was respectful and business like— something Gendo appreciated greatly. Most of his employees were too intimidated (or infatuated in Ritsuko's case) by him to give him straight, concise answers.

"The threats you will be facing here at Nerv are quite unlike the missions you had in the past. It will not be people you are fighting here; but monsters. Are you ready for that?"

The corners of John's mouth stayed passive and stoic as he nodded his head in a decided manner. "Sir, Spartans were made to make miracles happen. Although my brothers and sisters are unable to fight either due to injury or death, I am here and willing to work."

Just the answer Gendo was looking for. He let out a rare smile and pressed a button on his desk and called for Ritsuko to come in. Several minutes later the bleached blonde doctor entered the room and exchanged greetings with Halsey and John.

"Dr. Halsey, Ritsuko is the Chief of Project E. here at Nerv. She'll also be put in charge of John's health and unique condition. It would be prudent for her to have the information on the Spartans. You are all dismissed— John, it will be a pleasure working with you." And just like that the meeting was over. The young Spartan saluted the commander and placed his helmet over his head once again. The sole survivor of the Spartan II program was now under Nerv employ.

* * *

John finished saying his goodbyes as Dr. Halsey was escorted out of the Nerv building. He had promised to stay in touch with her, but he felt empty inside knowing that the woman who had helped raise him and his fellow Spartans was no longer going to be nearby. Ignoring the hollowness he felt inside he followed his new supervisor, Ritsuko Akagi down to a testing room.

"Okay John, I'd just like to start today with some basic strength tests, in and out of armor, so that I can get a measure of your health."

A quiet, "yes ma'am," was all John said in response. He had done this sort of thing countless times in the past.

Ritsuko did not know what to make of these test results. The Spartan put under her command was simply a monster when it came to any sort of physical activity. He had been able to run huge distances without any signs of fatigue, absolutely demolishing the world record for the marathon. He had clocked an average of thirty miles per hour _without his suit_ while running that twenty-six mile distance. He wasn't even winded.

When it came to physical strength Ritsuko's already high expectations were blown out of the water. ' _How the Hell can a human being do this?'_ she asked herself rhetorically. John was around two hundred-thirty pounds of lean muscle without his armor and weighed half a ton when he was in his signature green MJOLNIR suit. Without the suit on he was able to lift around three times his bodyweight, already a feat that once again smashed world records. In the suit however his strength was magnified so greatly that Ritsuko thought the sensors to have malfunctioned. With no great effort at all John had managed to lift around three tons in a straight up deadlift. It was as if a god lived in John's body.

His reaction times were nothing to laugh at either. The tests that Ritsuko performed gave a reading that his visual reaction time was _20 milliseconds_ , over ten times faster than an average human being. Ritsuko suspected that he was able to dodge bullets shot at point-blank range. ' _Just what is he?'_ the blonde doctor made a note to go over the files that Dr. Halsey had transferred over. ' _If he could pilot an Eva, the coming Angel war would be over…'_

Shaking her head clear of hopeful musings, she called down Misato to meet the newest employee of Nerv.

"Alright John, I have some people I would like you to meet. Wash up and meet me when you're done."

The Spartan nodded and stepped over to the platform where technicians swarmed him to take his armor off.

* * *

"So who's so important that you had to call me down here on my day off?" Misato was pretty annoyed, she'd much rather have stayed home then come down to the depths of Central Dogma.

Ritsuko sighed at her lazy friend, "I wouldn't have called you down here for some random nobody starting work here. Have you ever heard of the Spartan II program?"

Misato's surprise was evident as she sputtered over the coffee in her mouth, "Who hasn't heard of it? The Navy's greatest hero, Sierra-117 or whatever; everyone's heard of him. You can't even turn on the TV without hearing about some war that guy ended or whatever… Are you saying he's working for Nerv now?"

The blonde was about to say something when the hiss of the automatic door diverted the two women's attention to the new arrival.

"You wanted to see me again Dr. Akagi?" the soldier asked.

And so Misato met the Spartan.

 **AN: Here's some notes to clear up Master Chief's upbringing and childhood as a Spartan. In 2001 after the Valentine's Day Treaty, the UN decided to launch the Spartan II program so that future conflicts could be ended quickly and efficiently. That year John is abducted from his parents at the age of three and send to FLEETCOM with seventy-five other children. From the ages three (2001) to eleven (2009) they all train together, similarly to how he was trained in Halo. At age eleven, before puberty really begins, the Spartans are given their augmentation surgeries. Over half of the children die and the remaining Spartans save John are crippled and unfit for duty. John spends five years operating with the world's finest special operations teams taking down organized crime, rebellions and insurrections, and generally saving the world. Everyone learns about the Spartans, their sacrifices and he becomes a hero. In 2014 he becomes an agent for Nerv and the rest is yet to come.**


	2. Chapter 2: Step or Leap?

**2: Step or Leap?**

 **AN: I think Japanese suffixes are silly t b h**

 **Chapter teaser: The Third Angel (Sachiel) is spotted and Shinji arrives. After refusing to pilot the Evangelion when ordered by his father, John convinces Shinji fight the rampaging Angel. The fight ends with a twist… and Shinji does some thinking.**

" _ **In war, fathers bury their sons." —Herodotus**_

In the Pribnow Box stood a young boy who would soon have the fate of the world in his hands. In front of him the Evangelion, a terrifying machine of war in all its purple and green glory, and on a platform even above the Evangelion; Shinji's father. It was sad how the boy seemed to be more afraid of the latter, thought the boy's purple haired escort.

"I have a use for you now," Gendo never pulled a punch. Curt and abrasive and cruel; more than any physical abuse; the lack of love and attention is what had always hurt Shinji the most. "You can either hurry and get into the Evangelion or you can leave; I have no use for a Pilot who can't even do just that."

"You left me alone for years and now you just expect me to do whatever you want! I haven't even seen this thing before and you want me to fight that giant monster! Forget it…" Shinji's voice broke off at the end, angry at his father for putting him in such a situation; but mostly angry at himself for not being brave enough to fulfil his father's wishes. If only he was brave enough to fight like the Spartan he had seen earlier…

It might have been impossible, but the Commander did it anyway; his ill-disguised sneer contorted itself into an even more rancid expression of disgust. "The Third Child is useless as always. Bring in the First!" At his words, the doors at the side of the Pribnow Box opened up and a team of technicians rolled in a stretcher.

In the mobile bed lay a girl around Shinji's age, breathtakingly beautiful with a head of blue cut in a rough, amateurish pixie cut. The only problem was that she was brutalized. Arm broken and eye damaged and too many other injuries to enumerate; the stretcher was brought to a stop and the girl struggled to sit up.

 _She's so hurt and she still wants to fight?_ Shinji marveled at the girl's bravery and felt his disgust for himself mount ever higher. _How can she be so brave when I'm such a coward?_

"Commander, you can't possibly be considering letting Rei pilot the Eva! You're sentencing her to death!" The busty woman next to Shinji voiced her outrage when the boy himself couldn't.

Even with the blue haired Rei struggling to get up out of her stretcher and Misato trying to get her to lay back down; Shinji could not bring himself to say anything. He looked at his trembling hands and skinny wrists, _What's wrong with me? People out there are dying and this girl is ready to fight; why can't I?_

The doors to the side of the Pribnow Box opened for the second time. The distinctive clank of metal on metal reverberated around the enclosed space and Shinji saw _him_. It was the Spartan! Surely he could defeat the monster that was outside?

"Permission to speak to the Third Child sir?"

All Shinji knew of the iconic soldier was from news reports and pamphlets sometimes given out by the UN. Stories that were too farfetched to be anything but exaggerations made into propaganda, Shinji was a coward but no idiot.

The Nerv commander acquiesced by nodding his head to the Spartan and turned around to view the computer terminals behind him.

Having obtained permission from his commanding officer, Sierra-117 faced the Third Child and grasped his shoulder and bent down to the younger boy's level. Shinji felt small and weak in the presence of the Spartan. The soldier was everything that Shinji was not and the brown haired boy felt every bit of his insecurity biting deep, but words broke his thoughts. "Do your duty," said the soldier. The voice was hard and uncompromising and the pressure of the heavy hand on Shinji's shoulder did not make the soldier any less intimidating.

"I can't do this s-sir," somehow it seemed wrong _not_ to call the Spartan anything but sir even if that courtesy was not extended to his father who was _commander_ , "I've never been trained for anything like this… I haven't even seen the Evangelion before today! Can't anyone understand that I'm not the person for this?" Shinji was nearly hysterical in his anguish.

The hand on his shoulder shook Shinji lightly, "Don't stand here waiting for death. If the First Child gets in that Eva, she will die. She's already close to it. If you're going to let her and everyone else just die without a fight, I don't know what else to say to you. Don't let others suffer in your stead. Do your duty and remember; _no pity, no remorse, no fear._ " The Spartan stood back to his full imposing height and declared that he would be joining Shinji on the surface. While the onlookers were skeptical of the Spartan's ability to help in a battle against the Angel, no one discounted him completely. Spartans did only one thing after all; the impossible.

It was then Shinji finally decided to pilot the Evangelion. The blue haired girl, the Spartan; both were so much braver than him. It wasn't fair that they and others like them would go out and fight while he would stay and cower in the relative safety of the underground base. The Spartan was right; how _could_ he live with himself if he let that poor girl get into that machine?

"I'll do it… I'll pilot the Eva!" _No pity, no remorse, no fear._

* * *

Shinji cried in pain when his arm was ripped off. Scratch that— he cried in pain way before that happened. To say that the fight against the Angel wasn't going too well would have been an understatement. From the first moments when he took tottering steps in Eva Unit-01, Shinji knew that his fears were substantiated.

"Just try to walk!"

Yeah, that advice was really helpful. As if you could tell an infant to start walking. And because of this hesitation and lack of synchronicity between pilot and Evangelion; the Angel was able to strike the first blow; an incredible swing of the black and white angel's heavy upper body launched Unit-01 back hundreds of feet and caused Shinji to nearly back out in pain as he felt the impact of the Eva against a building.

 _No pity._

Shinji shook his head and tried to concentrate. He had to fight back to win didn't he? In his pain induced rage the Third Child managed to coax Unit-01 in sprinting forward in an awkward pattern and engage the Angel. That was a mistake Shinji would never make again. His inexperience with actual combat showed itself when he froze up in his approach of the Angel. Taking that brief moment of hesitation Sachiel crushed the head of the Evangelion in its left hand.

Shinji's screams were heart wrenching. Misato shot a nasty glare at the back of the Commander's head when he didn't do anything to help his son.

The Angel's arm began to glow a purplish color as sensors began reading a massive increase in energy levels. The arm elongated like a piston and shot forward several times, cracking the viewing screen of the Evangelion and eventually rocketing the Eva and Shinji backwards through several buildings until finally coming to a stop.

The viewers of the battle down in Central Dogma stood in shock as they saw their last real hope defeated until they saw him. The Spartan was scaling the body of the Angel! So small was the soldier in comparison to Sachiel that the A.T. Field ignored Master Chief. Big mistake.

"Focus the image!" Even amidst the terror of imminent defeat Commander Gendo sounded calm and in control; as if he had planned the whole thing out as part of his ' _scenario'_.

The technicians complied and the external camera zoomed in on and refined the image of John scaling the torso of the massive monster.

"Sir! Incoming transmission from Sierra-117!" said one of the Bridge Bunnies.

Gendo gestured to put the Spartan through. While there was no internal video camera inside the MJOLNIR helmet, they were able to hear audio.

"Status?" The simple question from Central Dogma summed up the situation.

John's voice was calm and sedate, reflective of his consummate professionalism that Gendo had come to appreciate so much. "Sir, I'm climbing up the Angel right now. My plan is to plant a bomb near its core."

"That'll never work! The A.T. Field generated by the Angel is going to be too strong for any bomb to penetrate, don't you remember that it took a direct hit from a N2 bomb earlier?"

Ritsuko hushed one of the technicians, "The A.T. Field is irrelevant at this point. John has already gotten past it… and if what we're seeing is correct, John has a tactical nuke with him. Isn't that right John?"

The response was crackly and filled with static from interference with the strange frequency of the Angel's own A.T. Field, but it was understandable nonetheless. "Correct Dr. Akagi, the tactical nuke was the biggest thing the armory had that I could carry around easily. I hope this will suffice."

Ritsuko laughed despite the situation, "Yeah, it'll be enough…"

Still worried as ever Mitsuko shot into the conversation, "Do you have a way to get out?" A minute of silence followed and Mitsuko spoke again, "Damn it John! You have to get out, you have to survive! You can't just keep—"

The Commander cut her off.

"Do your duty Spartan. This is what you were made to do."

Radio silence.

Then the boom.

* * *

The sound of a nuclear bomb going off, no matter what the size, is unignorable. Even though Shinji was dazed with pain he heard the boom of the nuke and quickly remembered his surroundings. A battle. Against an Angel. And he was laying on the ground. Something small in his tortured soul grew and grew until the Eva was back on it's feet and charging the damaged Angel.

Sachiel had suffered major damage from the point blank explosion. It's arms had been blown to bits and the off-white of bone was scorched by nuclear fire and radiation. The core on it's chest was cracking and flaking and turning grey; it seemed that gamma rays could kill even Angels.

With the Angel on it's last legs, the enraged Evangelion blindsided it and in short order wrestled the injured monster to the ground. Blow and strike and fist and hammer the purple war machine systematically dismantled the Angel Sachiel until it was no more. And with a heavy groan of it's damaged joints, the Eva stood and bellowed its anger and pain toward the heavens. The sound parting the clouds and shattering whatever buildings were left standing.

 _NOPITYNOREMORSENOFEARNOPITYNOREMORSENOFEAR_

Central Dogma was blurred with activity as they tried to get control over the rampaging war machine. Synch ratio over 300 percent. LCL pressure mounting. Heart rate like a racehorse.

"At this rate the Eva will end up doing more damage than the Angel itself!"

The Commander and his right hand man didn't seem to be very concerned.

"Katsuragi, deal with this mess."

The purple haired captain gritted her teeth in worry for Shinji and annoyance at the cruelty of the elder Ikari.

* * *

John woke up next to graves. Not actual graves, Tokyo-3 had been evacuated before the Angel had laid waste to the city, but they were graves nonetheless. Elephantine monuments made of the rubble of skyscrapers dedicated to the lives of the citizens that were not ended; but lost either way. The denizens of Tokyo-3 would never have their homes and belongings back, and with the newly added threat of additional Angel attacks growing; life in Tokyo-3 would never be safe again. That fool boy, ' _Shinji'_ John reminded himself, was no hero. Too much hesitation. Too much fear to be truly useful. Still, the Eva pilot was similar to the Spartans, dead and crippled. They too had been unwilling and scared of their duty in the beginning. Could Shinji also grow out of his fears and insecurities or had that stage already passed?

He paid no attention to the faint clicking of the built in Geiger counter in his suit as he approached the downed Evangelion and Angel, both intertwined in a frozen dance of death with one another. His body hardly even ached. The reactive gel-crystal layer in his suit and augmented bones had absorbed the shock of _the nuclear bomb_ that went off in his close proximity. But despite his capability to ignore even the enormous force of the tactical nuke, he could not ignore the small voice in his head that whispered to him not to fault Shinji Ikari for his shortcomings. Shinji was not a Spartan, just a boy, no matter how similar the situation between the child soldiers were. Shinji was a boy that either had to embrace humanity and become its savior or reject it and become a bystander for the greatest Holocaust. John decided then and there that he personally would make sure the First Child chose correctly.

* * *

A boy woke up in that room for the first time. The ceiling was not one he knew. It was a hospital ward. The machines humming that he was alive even though he didn't feel like it. Shinji could barely move he was so tired, so achingly tired. What had even happened during that Angel attack? He didn't remember anything besides a rage that was not his own yet one that he embraced with arms spread eagle.

Next to him was the blue haired girl from before, Rei Ayanami. The so called First Child. She was staring at Shinji and it made him feel awkward. Girls had never really noticed him before, he wasn't especially handsome or tall or strong or brave, just plain. The attention was awkward but Shinji knew that the injured girl had no romantic intentions. She probably hated him for being so reluctant to pilot the Eva, after all, if the Spartan hadn't said anything Shinji probably wouldn't have went into combat. The apathy was so strong on Ayanami's face that Shinji couldn't meet her gaze for any longer and had to look away at the rest of the boring room.

The door of the hospital opened and Misato from earlier walked in carrying a white shirt and black pants for the prone pilot. "Hey hero! You can get up now, I signed you out of the hospital and the doctors say that you're okay to go." Her smile was dazzling and like most teenage boys, Shinji fell in love just a little bit. "Ritsuko said she would be checking in on you soon Rei, she'll update you on your recovery." Misato added.

He changed and left the hospital ward with the pretty woman. Apparently she had been charged with finding a place for him to live.

"It's no trouble for me to live on my own." After all, his previous guardian hadn't been too involved with his life.

Misato was having none of that however. "Children shouldn't live alone, how do you expect to take care of yourself? The stipend that Nerv will be issuing won't be enough for you to survive on your own after all." She paused for a moment and put a finger to her lip in thought. "I know, you can live with me! I've been looking for a roommate to help out with cleaning and cooking and…"

Somehow Shinji knew that this wouldn't end well.

* * *

Several carefully placed phone calls later, Misato was now the Third Child's legal guardian and she had motioned Section 2 to bring Shinji's luggage to her apartment. The unlikely pair left the hospital in the Misato's battered Renault Alpine to a location which Misato had promised would be worth the trip.

"Misato, where are we going?"

"You'll see." The car pulled out of the hospital's parking lot. It would not be the last time Misato went to the hospital on Shinji's accord.

It took a while for the two to leave the city. Much of the outgoing roads had been destroyed in the battle against the Angel and Shinji felt a twinge of guilt for it. How many millions of dollars worth of man hours and materials and human suffering had he wasted in his reluctant battle? Could such a quantity even be labeled with a simple number?

 _I deserve to suffer._ Such thoughts were not uncommon to Shinji. He was a nuisance after all. Couldn't even be trusted to take care of himself, he had to be foisted upon a total stranger. Maybe his father was right in casting him aside all those years ago. He couldn't even save the city correctly. Without the Spartan to—

"Why the long face?"

Sweet words from a sweet face broke Shinji out of his thoughts. Confused he could only respond with an awkward "Huh?".

Misato only smiled at him, something pretty yet sad at the same time. As if she knew a sampling of the tumult underneath the veneer of Shinji's expression.

"You should be proud right now."

Shinji shuffled his feet awkwardly in the dirt. It had been so long since he had been sincerely praised. "It was nothing really… If anything I should have acted faster."

"No," Misato disagreed. "You owed nothing, you _owe_ nothing to the people in this city. You don't even owe anything to your father. Piloting the Eva needs to be your decision for your own reason. If not, that purple monster is going to be your grave."

The conversation took a serious turn that Shinji wasn't prepared for. How could he? Misato was usually such an airhead; it was weird to think that she was capable of mature thoughts.

"What do you want me to do?"

Misato sighed and pointed. Shinji's eyes traced the line of her arm and finally saw what she was pointing to. "That's the city you protected Shinji. Look at it sparkle." And truly it did. Glinting red and yellow in the glow of the dying sun, the buildings sank into the ground and disappeared from plain view. A marvel of human engineering; Tokyo-3 and its Geofront. "That city is _your_ home now Shinji."

The two sat in silence for several minutes until they got back into their car. No words needed; an awkward agreement between the two.

* * *

Sleep evaded him. The dreamy, gossamer strands of spun silver light that danced through his window and blinds were distracting. Sitting up on the blankets that made up his bed, Shinji thought and thought about what he had done, what he had learned from his short excursion in the Eva and interactions with Nerv.

Two differing philosophies had been offered today. John, the Spartan, had spoken of duty to humanity and to honor the sacred task of protecting those who could not protect themselves. It was noble and selfless to be sure, and it made sense considering just who the Spartan was. For someone who was raised as sword and shield against the evils that plagued mankind, of course duty and honor and sacrifice were on the top of his priorities. Was John a hero simply because he was raised, molded, and forced into his role? Shinji didn't know for sure, but it seemed likely.

' _I'm no hero.'_ Shinji thought to himself. Of course he wasn't. Who could compare themselves to the Spartan? The same person (Shinji didn't know for certain John's age for it was too embarrassing to ask) who had single handedly foiled terrorist attacks and overthrown dangerous regimes and splinter groups. The Spartan was certainly a hero that would live forever in the stories passed down from parent to child. He was a legend and Shinji was… he didn't really know what to call himself after the whole debacle.

Was he a hero for making the decision to step into that awful robot and fight when all odds were against him? He'd like to think so, but it was all too easy to call himself a coward when he had been too scared to fight even when the injured First Child, Rei, was willing.

Now there was a hero. Rei Ayanami. Hair born of sky and eyes forged from melting rubies. Broken, barely standing, barely even _breathing_ she was ready to fight to her death. Shinji couldn't even find a word to describe that sort of heroism. Was Rei a hero because of her willingness, nay _desire_ , to sacrifice and bleed and maybe even die for others? Probably. But that meant that being a hero was a choice. John was a hero because he _chose_ to fight terror and do the impossible. Rei was a hero because she _chose_ to take pain by the throat and master it. Shinji could then do the same. _But it's hard._

Then there was Misato. Kind and soft and beautiful, the Nerv Captain had already earned great trust from her younger roommate. While John had advised Shinji to fight for humanity as a collective, Misato wanted him to find his own reason to fight. Certainly Misato's philosophy was a more selfish way of looking at things, but hadn't Shinji earned the right to be a bit selfish? It was his life and body that went on the line every time he donned his plug suit and entered the orange blood waters of the Entry Plug. Wasn't it his right and responsibility as an individual to find his reason for fighting these Angels?

' _Well, that's going to be a problem,'_ Shinji thought to himself cynically. What reason did he have to fight? The 14 year old wasn't even sure if his father would mourn his death. What was to say that his new friend Misato, or his old teacher, or the assortment of friends he had made in the past would even remember him? For a boy with no meaningful connections to others; finding a reason of his own that he was willing to die for was difficult. ' _Maybe I should fight for what I live for?'_ Shinji asked himself in the lonely spaces in his mind and recieved no answer. That was a good way to look at things, he decided. What was worth living for was worth dying for. And he did not want to die just yet.

' _What do I live for?'_ The pilot of the purple Eva didn't know for sure. He had hobbies, but no passions. He had friends but no one to call family. His father was one only in name and he couldn't recall anything about his mother. Several minutes of frantic self-searching later, Shinji realized something terrifying. He was living just to live. Living only because the alternative was so horrendous, so _unthinkable_ — was understanding death even physically possible for something that had only ever experienced life? Shinji had no reason to live and therefore had no reason not to die.

He certainly loved to help people. That was maybe his only true passion in life. Cooking and cleaning and generally being useful was something that Shinji loved to do. But any happiness derived from helping others was countered by the pain of his loneliness and isolation. Life truly was a zero-sum-game.

In a rare instance of assertion the pilot of Unit-01 pushed aside the advice of both John-117 and Misato Katsuragi. No reason to live and no reason not to die, why not just pilot the Eva until the dreaded inevitable impossibility came?

' _Suicide is always an option I guess,'_

Ah yes, suicide: the unthinkable betrayal of self. But no reason not to die didn't mean he had reason _to_ die. In fact, any pain and suffering caused by piloting the Eva was pretty much balanced by the satisfaction he gained from knowing that he had helped protect the city he was quickly growing to call home and the person he was beginning to think of as family. The terror of death and the wonderment of living were equal to him. He would not off himself just yet.

Was this his reason? The nihilistic life just for the sake of living, he decided.

"I'm going to live for now. Not because of what people want or say but because right now I want to live and so that I can be happy by helping others… And when push comes to shove, when helping people stops making me happy; that's when I'll die."

His statement was spoken simply in a hushed tone, the silence of the room replaced by the quiet murmurs of a boy who had built his first convictions.

A sleep came soon afterwards and Shinji dreamt of himself.

 **AN and summary:**

 **Master Chief knocks some motivation into Shinji and convinces him to get in the damn robot. In an act of daring and heroics, John played an important role in the battle against Sachiel and gave Shinji an opportunity to take down the Angel once and for all.**

 **Unlike the anime, Shinji has found a true reason to fight. Misato wanted him to fight for himself and John wanted him to fight for humanity. Shinji found a middle ground by deciding that the reason for his life was to help others, thereby justifying piloting the Eva. At the same time he realized that life wasn't really happy or sad, positive or negative, but a neutral existence. He would live until helping others didn't make him happy anymore.**

 **Hope you enjoy this chapter. I had a lot of fun writing it. Please review and give feedback and PM me!**


	3. Chapter 3: Settle for perfection

**Chapter 3: Settle for perfection**

 **AN: There's no point in writing a pointless scene of filler.**

 **Reviews:**

 **nissangtrlover2569** **:** **So John-117 was able to get through the A.T. Field because he wasn't considered a threat by the Angel. He might be a Spartan, but he's also a thousand times smaller than the Angel.**

 **Chapter teaser: Shinji goes to school. John goes about his daily business. Life goes on. John decides to take responsibility for training Shinji in combat. Shamshel descends.**

" **Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."- Alexis Carrel**

This was his third day at school. Or was it the fourth? Shinji didn't really know and he didn't really care. School wasn't that important to the pilot of a 140 foot tall biomechanical robot. Most of his days were fairly simple. Wake up, wash, then cook breakfast for Misato and go to school. It wasn't that different from the average 14 year old's life and Shinji appreciated the sense of normalcy he got from the well repeated routine.

It was a good life, or as good a life as Shinji had ever known. Leaving behind a breakfast for Misato, who was still hungover, Shinji packed his school bag and left the apartment pausing briefly to say goodbye to Pen Pen.

* * *

He didn't have any friends at school. Everyone there already seemed to know each other already. As a transfer student, and an average one at that, he was the talk of the classroom for maybe a day before he sank into backs of everyone's minds as a nonentity.

"Stand! Bow!"

The class representative called for the start of the class by showing respect to their teacher. Shinji didn't really understand why they did this every morning. The lesson plan the teacher went over was fairly dull. Always talking about the effects of Second Impact and not much else. He supposed that it was an important topic to study, but ultimately not one that was terribly interesting.

The display of the laptop flashed for a moment, indicating that someone had messaged him. He wasn't too sure why the students were assigned the laptops when all they used the red machines for was silently communicating during the teacher's lesson; but Shinji wasn't one to complain. After all, any conversation was preferable to hours of stagnant boredom.

 _Is it true you're the pilot?_

Shinji didn't know who it was who asked him. The sender, one K. Aida, was not someone he was familiar with yet.

He debated with himself for a moment. Was it prudent to let everyone know about his status as a pilot? The attention would probably be fun for a while, and there was the chance that he might make a friend from the whole experience. No one had exactly _forbidden_ him from divulging his status as an Eva pilot…

 _Yes._

He responded and the class swarmed him. For the rest of class he spent his time answering the questions that his classmates had for him. Thirty minutes of celebrity that the teacher didn't even attempt to quell. The questions were mostly basic and superficial, like the color of the Eva, how big it was, what it looked like, etc.

For the first time in years Shinji felt accepted and loved and respected.

He didn't notice the boy in a dark tracksuit storming out of the room.

* * *

This wasn't the kind of invitation that you could decline. Shinji arrived home with a note taped to his door.

 _I'm picking you up at 15:00. Dress comfortably. — S-117_

Of course _he_ used military time. It was a note from John. Shinji didn't know what this invitation (more of a demand when you really thought about it) entailed. He went inside and changed into a old pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt. He didn't have much to choose from. Looking at the clock on the wall in his room, he noticed he had a good 30 minutes until the Spartan had promised to come.

Halfway through his mathematics homework, the doorbell rang.

Shinji rushed to the door to answer it. The person outside was all at once familiar and unfamiliar. Judging by the height and musculature of the man standing outside, there was no mistaking it; it was the Spartan. This was however, the first time Shinji had laid eyes on the Chief outside of his armor.

John-117 stood over a foot and a half taller than the 14 year old Eva pilot. The Spartan stared at the shorter teenager with deep set eyes and irises that seemed to shift in a gradient from faint purple to iceberg blue. His eyes were full of haunting memory and danced as if possessed by ghosts. The rest of him was shrouded in shadows and light play of the afternoon.

The Spartan caught Shinji staring. "My eyes."

"Huh?" Shinji was startled.

"My eyes. They're like that because of a surgery. They added additional nerves and blood vessels so that I could see better. Everytime my heart beats the color changes a little." The Spartan sighed and shook his head. "Let's go. We're going to be late."

"Where are we going?" Shinji stepped out of his apartment and followed the Chief. The sliding door hissed shut and automatically locked behind him. Now in the mostly empty hallway, Shinji finally got a clear look at John. His hair was brown and plain, cut in a standard crew cut befitting his military position. Shinji would have called him handsome, but John was far too intimidating to be considered such. One look at that finely chiseled face and Shinji could tell that John was a man of few smiles.

John was wearing a plain grey T-shirt with the Nerv logo printed on it. What portions of his arms were visible, one could see the scars that populated his otherwise eerily perfect skin; scars like ropes that competed with the blue-green veins that contrasted so sharply against the white canvas of skin.

' _How'd he get those scars?'_ Shinji wondered. They were far too orderly to be caused by an accident or enemy attack. In fact, the same scars that outlined the Chief's muscles were symmetrical. Left and right side were identical. It was almost as if the Chief had flexed and torn his skin in the process. Of course, not all were like that. There were burns and bullet holes galore, one particularly terrible wound above the Adam's apple caught Shinji's eye. A puncture wound in that particular space would have had to have punctured the vital trachea, maybe even one of the cervical vertebrae had been damaged. ' _He survived that…'_

"I'm taking you to the gym." John turned and started a brisk pace that Shinji found hard to match. The soldier's stride length was almost double that of the younger boy.

The Eva pilot was confused. "Why the gym? I've never been before."

John grunted, "So I've been told. Commander Ikari has ordered me to make sure that you are proficient in combat. The first battle with the Angel was a travesty. I'll be coaching you in strength and combat training."

Shinji agreed. The fight against Sachiel would have been lost if John had not intervened. And it wasn't as if he had anything better to do.

"When do I start?"

They reached the sliding glass doors of the apartment complex.

"Right now. You're running to Nerv."

Shinji nodded, scared of the future but determined to make the Spartan proud. Step by nervous step, he ran, not away from danger; but straight into it.

* * *

Three hours later, Shinji arrived at his apartment covered in sweat and blood. Misato wasn't home just yet and Shinji was glad for it. He wasn't quite sure if his nose had broken or not, but it had hurt life fire when John smashed him in the face during their spar.

He made his way to the bathroom and idly waved at Pen-Pen, who was watching television.

" _I must look terrible.'_ He thought to himself after hearing the warm water penguins surprised " _Wark!"_.

Ignoring the throbbing of his nose and the crusty feeling of dried sweat and blood, he opened the door to the bathroom and flipped the light switch. The face in the mirror was not a pretty one. Raising a trembling hand to his blackened eye and bloody nose and aching jaw, Shinji forgot about the rest of his aching muscles. Gingerly he opened a package of paper towels and began to wash his face gingerly. Each time his brushed his nose a spasm of pain lanced up his nerves and caused him to flinch. It took about 15 minutes for Shinji to clean his face to an acceptable degree. There was a bit of swelling in his nose and jaw, but thankfully nothing was broken. In fact, the most noticeable of his injuries was a simple black eye.

Training with John was difficult to say the least, but Shinji enjoyed it to a certain degree. The beginning lessons on how to bench and squat and deadlift safely was enjoyable. In fact, exercise was immensely cathartic. Lifting the heavy iron barbell felt as if the stress of piloting the Eva had been replaced by the much more manageable issue of simply straining against gravity and the mass of the weights. The ache in his arms and chest and legs and back were welcome signs of Shinji's labor; something that he could have pride in.

"I'm being taught by the Master Chief." Shinji said to his battered reflection in the mirror. Against all logic he grinned. A small portion of Shinji's twisted psyche even enjoyed the sparring portion of the day.

Shinji didn't really like having to fight back against the Chief, but a niggling voice in his mind told him that he deserved to be hit. Hadn't he fucked up in the most basic of ways when hesitating to pilot the Eva? The bruises and pains he had were simple reminders not to fuck up ever again; and Shinji loved it, maybe even wanted it. The pain was punishment for all of his past transgressions and cowardice.

Even still, Shinji knew that John wasn't malicious in his harsh teaching methods. Each hit had been because of Shinji's own mistakes. A late dodge or forgotten block had led to the Spartan's punches actually connecting. And of course, the Spartan _had_ to be holding back.

Shinji filled the bathtub with warm water and undressed. He soaked and briefly paid attention to Misato's cries that she had arrived. He knew that he had to cook dinner today, but he was just so tired…

* * *

Dinner was a muted affair. After being woken up in the bathroom by Misato's knocking, Shinji had declared himself "too tired" to make food that night.

Misato called for pizza. The silence that ensued was cutting. She didn't really know how to address the bruises and cuts on Shinji's face; so she didn't. ' _Don't ask, don't tell'_ right?

"How was your day Shinji?" Misato tried her best to sound upbeat. It was that awkward moment where no one had anything to do.

Shinji grunted and turned from his spot on the sofa. He wasn't really watching the TV as much as just having the colors stream across his face. "It was fine… John took me to the gym today. I exercised a bit and we sparred."

Ah, so that's where the bruises were from. Misato felt anger bubbling deep within. Did John have no discretion? Beating on Shinji, a boy so emotionally unstable, was not a good idea; especially when Shinji was the only available pilot for the Eva.

"How was yours?"

Shinji's question broke Misato out of her thoughts.

"Oh, mine was pretty boring. I went to Nerv, did some paperwork, talked to Rits…" Misato had also talked to the Commander, but she didn't know whether or not to mention it to her young roommate.

"So what are your plans for tomorrow? You have school off since it's the weekend. You have anything you wanna do?" Misato asked whilst smiling brightly.

Shinji rubbed the back of his head. "Well, John told me to go to the gym everyday. He even gave me a schedule and a list of exercises that I need to do everyday. He said that he would show me how to shoot a gun tomorrow."

Misato already knew this. After all, she _was_ in charge of pilot operations at Nerv, and because Shinji was under her direct supervision on and off the field, Misato had actually been one of the ones to sign off on Shinji being put under John for training. Seeing Shinji flinch every time he accidently touched his nose or facial bruises sent guilt coursing through the Major.

"Do you like it? Training with John I mean." She couldn't help but asking, hoping for an honest answer.

Shinji paused as if to choose his words carefully. "Parts of it I like. The exercise is fun, and I feel better after doing it."

That wasn't exactly what Misato was looking for. She sipped at her beer while motioning Shinji to continue.

"The sparring really hurts… I can tell that John is holding back, but sometimes I just can't dodge in time or block." Shinji raised his arms to show livid purple bruises. "Even when I block it hurts…"

Finally sincerity. Too bad the truth wasn't pleasant.

"You don't have to keep doing it if you don't want to. I can get someone else for sparring…"

Shinji shook his head in response. "It's okay Misato. I don't mind terribly. John is a good teacher, and it's really cool that I get to learn from a Spartan. Even though it hurts…" Shinji seemed to consider his bruises more seriously. "Even though it hurts, it's like John says. Protecting people is my duty, as a human being. I need to learn how to fight if I want to protect people."

Misato didn't know what to say to that. She wasn't exactly okay with Shinji letting himself get hurt over a misguided sense of duty, but what could she do?

"As long as you're okay with it…"

The door rang and the two feasted on pizza.

* * *

The next morning was interrupted by a crisp knocking. There was only one person who actually knocked instead of using the call button. That's how Shinji knew it was John.

"Misato! Could you get the door?" Shinji called from the kitchen. He had decided on cooking a western style breakfast of eggs and rashers of bacon and hashbrowns.

The woman answered in the negative. "Let Pen-Pen get it!" She declared.

Strange how the bird could do that. The door unlocked and hissed open and John entered the apartment.

"Good morning Captain Katsuragi, Shinji." He said with a curt salute and nod to the latter.

Misato walked out of the bathroom in all her toweled glory. "You don't need to be so stiff you know John! We're all friends here!" She winked at the Spartan. And was shocked to see that the boy hadn't even blushed. Impossible! ' _I'm still young and sexy!'_ Misato told herself.

"It does good to pay proper respect to a commanding officer Captain."

Misato dried her hair while replying, "This is an order then John. Call me Misato. Captain Katsuragi is for the Commander and Sub-commander; it makes me feel old."

The Master Chief grunted and turned to Shinji. "We're leaving as soon as you're done." The Spartan slung his back over the back of a chair. Who knew what was in the bag?

"What's in the bag John?" Misato was curious. She tightened her towel wrapping around herself and walked to the dining room table where John had seated himself.

"2009 Prototype XCR, rail-integrated through KeyMod. It shoots 5.56 x 45 at a rate of 700 to 900—"

Misato nodded her head. "Gun. Modded. Fast. Got it. Is that for Shinji? He might be a pilot, but I don't really want him to have access to a gun all the time… He's just a teenager you know."

"I'm only 17 Captain Misato." John zipped open the bag and pulled out the firearm. Misato had to agree that it was certainly a beauty.

It was heavier, and larger than most guns. ' _Must've been made specially for Spartans. No wonder it's a prototype.'_ Misato thought to herself. The anodized maroon surface of the key modded XCR reflected very little light. The 18.5 inch extended black barrel sat in the red cage of the framed handguard like a patient beast waiting to strike. Misato's every sense screamed danger. Even with the magazine unattached, it felt as if the gun would load itself when no one was expecting it. Almost as if it wanted to…

"In any case. That's not for Shinji. The 2009 XCR was a prototype model made especially for Spartan's. It's made of a specially treated ceramic-titanium alloy that is impractical and too heavy for use in normal situations. I've been told the recoil on this gun is ridiculous."

"I guess that makes me feel better. You said your teaching Shinji to shoot today?" Misato asked.

John nodded. "I've come here because plans have changed. I'm being deployed to the Philippines. There's an extremist cell that I'm being ordered to put down. I've come to give Shinji his firearm, and additional information on what to do while I'm away."

"What do you mean by firearm? I thought you said that the gun wasn't for Shinji." Misato asked. She wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of Shinji owning a gun. After all he lived a very stressful life, the slightest thing could set him off…

"It's the Commander's orders that Shinji be adequately trained. He's behind both the First and Second Children when it comes to combat ability. Gun training is simply another facet that Shinji needs to improve in."

Misato sighed. "I guess you're right. Can't really disobey the Commander either…" Just thinking about the man made her angry. How could he force all of this pressure and pain on his own son?

John took the sleek assault rifle from Misato and packed it away. From his bag he brought out a standard issue Beretta, much like the one that Misato had been given following her promotion to Captain.

"Shinji." The Spartan's tone belayed no nonsense and immediately called the boy over from his station in the kitchen.

"Yes sir?" Shinji stood to attention as best he knew how.

John put the handgun on the table and handed Shinji a folded piece of paper.

"I'm going to be gone for several weeks. I expect you to continue with both combat and physical training. In addition to what you're already doing. You will go to the firing range every day and work on accuracy." John gestured to the shiny new pistol lying conspicuously on the tabletop. "This is your gun. Take care of it, don't do anything stupid."

"Yes sir!"

* * *

Three hours later the Fourth Angel, Shamshel was detected.

 **AN: No Toji pre-fight drama, there's time for that later. I've also decided to not ship John with anyone besides Expect major diversions from the canon storyline in terms of timing of major events. The fic will probably get really dark (and better imo) a little bit after Asuka enters.**

 **As always, review with any questions or suggestions.**


	4. Chapter 4: Memories! All alone in the

**Chapter 4: Memories! All alone in the moonlight…**

 **Chapter teaser: John remembers some shit. Shinji kills the Fourth Angel.**

" **Those happy highways where I went, and cannot come again." - A.E. Housman**

 _2015_

John sat alone in the bare hangar of the VTOL. There was blood on his armor. He had been operating in the close quarters of a dilapidated apartment building where the insurrectionists had made their headquarters. Back spatter from his carefully aimed gunshots had covered him head to toe in gore.

But John didn't mind. It was his job after all, the insurrectionists were criminals, and the still recovering government of Manila-4 couldn't risk having a single rebel survive.

Yes. John had traversed the broken, gutted, and flooded portions of the city where the rebels had made their base. Had killed guard dogs and the angel worshipping religious fanatics so obsessed with overthrowing the government. He had killed their wives and children with screaming bullets and angry grenade shrapnel. Just another day's work for him.

He would dream of the children for days.

Good thing he didn't need to sleep very much.

Still, John maintained a certain professional distance from those he killed. They were of course, the _enemy._ And every enemy has to be eliminated. It was his job. He was good at it.

There were still over a dozen terrorist cells John-117 would have to take out before his mission was done. There would be more blood on his hands yet. And why not? He was made for this. He was the sponge to soak up the sins of man, the hands that would fix the world, the gun that would kill the enemy; the perfect soldier.

It was sad to think that such military perfection had no choice in the matter. John as a unique entity had been beaten to death all those years ago. All that was left now was the Spartan, John-117. He didn't even know his last name. Any form with his full name on it was either classified to the highest degree, or [redacted] with the blackest of inks.

He didn't like these moments of calm. Too much time to think. John knew that something had been taken from him, something integral to being a human being had been lost in the steaming jungles of Africa and cold fjords of Greenland where the Spartans had been molded, carved from the innocence of children and plated in iron.

Thankfully, the communications headset in his helmet blared to crackling life.

"Sierra-117, we have a situation." It was Misato.

John tensed in his suit. His VTOL was enroute to the next terrorist base, but if Misato was calling for the Spartan _while_ he was on an official U.N. peacekeeping mission, the situation had to be grave. Just what could have happened to warrant a Spartan being called back home?

"It's an Angel, codename: Shamshel. We're bringing you back to Nerv HQ."

The Spartan checked his gun again, making sure everything was well oiled and loaded. The smooth click of the loading mechanism was satisfying and reassuring. Would he even be able to help against an Angel? He had the traitorous suspicion that he had only been able to enter the Angel's A.T. field because the monster didn't see him as a threat, but that status had surely changed after his stunt with the nuclear bomb.

"I'm on my way." John was scared, but he would not run.

* * *

 _2009_

"You're going to be able to _eat through metal_ and _breathe through poison_. We're going to turn you all into _Gods_." The head surgeon, Josef Mengele III, snapped on a pair of sterile blue latex gloves, smiling madly all the time. His accent was heavy German.

For 8 years they had waited this moment. Eight years of becoming the best human beings possible. These 11 year olds had the physiques of 18 year old Olympic athletes such was their genetic perfection and physical conditioning. Now the surgeries would start and they would graduate to becoming _real_ Spartans. The insertion of the second heart so they could run for hundreds of kilometers without feeling strain. The creation of the ossmodula, so their ribs would fuse into a single bony plate capable of stopping a shotgun round point blank. The platinum-based catalyst attachment to the pituitary gland, turning the outdated human hormonal organ into an _biscopea._ The Spartan's would be awake the whole time.

Chemicals of course, dulled the pain; no human would be able to withstand such terrors without going insane. But the Spartans would be something more than human once all was said and done. The creation of new organs, the duplication of other ones. How could they be considered human? Once the oolitic kidney was installed, a Spartan would be able to filter and purge the whole of their circulatory system in _minutes_. Would a human being be capable of breathing underwater? Of course not. But the Spartans would be able to, thanks in part to a surgery which would partition each lung into partitions.

There were pages of these surgeries detailed in the dossiers that each Spartan had received prior. A Lyman's ear. The Sus-an Membrane. Larraman's organs, haemastamen, Catalepsean nodes, and Occulobes. John hadn't bothered to read it depth. His brothers and sisters had paid very careful attention to the procedure, worrying and chattering excitedly about what they thought the outcome would be like. John however didn't care. With or without augmentations, he would be a soldier, a Spartan that would fight for the safety of humanity against any enemy.

There were 75 steel surgical tables in the large amphitheatre. From all around the world, the greatest minds in the medical field had gathered to turn these boys and girl become gods.

John looked to his left and right, even while lying supine on the coldness of the metal table. Kelly and Fred, Linda to his north. Even in surgery, Blue team was together. This was the last time he would see them.

The straps secured his arms and legs to the table. They put a thick piece of foam in his mouth to keep him from screaming, the taste was sterile and dead.

"And now, we begin!"

John recognized Halsey watching from the observation deck. He felt the knife like fire cutting through his skin, the fire of chemicals coursing through his veins, invasive fingers prodding and pulling gently at arteries and organs, moving them out of the way to make more space for bigger and better things. He felt himself take that vital step from man to overman, and passed out.

* * *

"It's okay to cry John." Halsey was sitting on a seat she had pulled up next to John's hospital bed. She herself had a wet tissue in her hand, trying to daub away tears and running makeup. Her shoulders heaved every so often with exhaustion and sorrow.

John didn't know how to feel. How could he? For the better part of his life he had bled and fought with his brothers and sisters. His equals, the Spartans. And now, they were gone? Not through battle, but through _surgery_? John didn't know how to feel, but he knew he felt angry. Halsey's cries were loud; in fact, _everything_ was loud. He could hear the step of shoes even through the closed door of the hospital room, the minute motions of servos and motors and electrical synapses running in the machines that carefully monitored him. What had they done to him?

"They're all gone… I'm a murderer John! I started this program trying to help people… I thought I would save lives. But all that for what? 74 children, dead because of me."

John looked straight up. He could see perfectly, so perfectly in fact that the normally smooth, pristine floortiles of the ceiling looked to be full of imperfections.

"Spartan's never die…"

Halsey looked up from her grief in surprise. John wasn't supposed to be able to talk yet. The various surgeries to his vocal cords to make his voice more threatening should have taken weeks to heal. It had been two days since his surgery.

"They're only missing in action."

Halsey looked even sadder and John felt guilty for causing her pain. Looking at her he noticed that he could count each individual pore, each strand of hair if he so tried. What had they done?

"It's better to face these sorts of traumas as soon as possible John… You can't deny—"

John tried to sit up and was met by the snapping of various restraints. It hadn't even been difficult.

The doctor's sadness was replaced by professional incredulity. "That… That shouldn't be possible! You should be bedridden for at least the next couple of months!"

"Dr. Halsey I feel fine." John was partially telling the truth. In fact, his body felt stronger and faster than ever.

Pouring over medical charts on her PDA, she waved John away. "I know I'm never going to be able to keep you here. If you feel okay, I guess you can go. Just be back here for tests at 3:00 PM." She sounded sad and defeated and excited all at once.

The Spartan nodded and walked out of the hospital ward. A camera in the corner of the room caught everything.

* * *

An 8 year old girl stepped out of the pool, dripping water. "Ah! That was really fun!" She toweled herself off while looking at her guardian. "Thanks for taking me to the pool today!"

The scruffy man yawned and stretched his limbs. "Yeah, my pleasure." It was his job after all to keep Asuka happy. This little girl, for some reason or another, had been selected as a pilot for the Evangelion's that were currently in development. "Let's go to the gym Asuka." It was always a good idea to do anything to keep the hyper-active girl busy. Hopefully she'd exhaust herself for the rest of the day at the gym.

"Okay Kaji!" She smiled brightly at her guardian, a precious smile.

He couldn't help but smile back.

He took her by the hand and the two walked over to the gym adjoining the swimming pool.

* * *

John-117 sat at the bench press alone. In the past, it had always been a fellow Spartan to spot him while lifting, now he was alone.

The gym at the Nerv-Germany/University of Heidelberg was modern and well maintained. It smelled clean, only the scent of iron and chalk was in the air.

The remaining Spartan had found that his previous personal records for various compound lifts had been smashed. Already, even just days after his surgery and almost no time to acclimatize to them, he was able to lift an additional 50 kilograms on top of his already impressive lifts. He was 11 years old and he had been allowed to compete in the Olympics, he would have crushed everything and everyone in every sport.

Still, the exercise was cathartic and taught him much about his new body and it's ever expanding limits.

There were 7 other people in the gym. Five soldiers, ODST guessing by their tattoos, a little girl and her guardian. They all watched in awe as the 11 year old benched over 200 kg without straining.

Just what was he? John felt the urge to run back to his room and find the dossier that he had ignored prior to the surgery.

"Kaji, who's that?" The little girl was hanging off one of the exercise machines, clearly having fun playing around on the various machines. "Why's he got so many scars?"

John could hear her whispers easily and noted that she was correct. The visible portions of his arms and legs were covered in angry pink, barely healed scar tissue. If only she could have seen his torso, that was _far_ worse than anything on his extremities.

He didn't particularly care about his looks, but didn't like the girl's curious tone. He had never been particularly good with dealing with other people, and had absolutely no experience with children younger than he.

"It's not nice to stare." The man, Kaji, chastised the redhead.

"I just want to—" The girl started before pausing. The 5 soldiers had gotten up and were approaching the scarred boy.

This would not end well.

* * *

"Hey kid, what do you think you're doing here alone?" A soldier said leaning against the power rack and over John, who was readying for his next set. He was around John's height, but obviously older. "This is a military base, don't you know that?"

John racked the weight and sat up, looking forward. His eyes were neutral. "I am military."

"A brat like you? Not likely. We'll take you back to your parents kid, where are they?" A soldier grabbed John by the bicep, trying to pull him up.

John wouldn't move. His opposite hand reached the older man's hand that was straining to pull the Spartan up and broke it. The man fell to the floor screaming.

The other soldiers quickly helped the injured man to his feet. It was quite easy to see how damaged the bone was. Several phalanges had been crushed, one fragment even stuck out of the skin in a bloody mess.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"

John was sat still and the ODST that had began the whole altercation shoved him by the shoulders, yelling all the while.

"You. Me. Ring. Right now brat. I'm going to beat the shit out of you!"

That competitive streak that allowed John to be such an effective Spartan kicked in. He nodded his agreement and followed the four remaining soldiers to the boxing ring.

"Kaji, I want to go watch!" The little girl who had commented on 117's scars earlier shouted.

Her guardian dumbly nodded, also curious as to just what that boy was. To be able to break a grown man's hand at the age of 11…

* * *

"Just who are you?" John's opponent asked him.

John stood in the center of the ring, unmoving and unfeeling. All he could think about was how he could hear the beating of each heart in the vast boxing room.

"I'm a Spartan." He finally answered.

That seemed to get the ODST even angrier. "Of fucking course,you're one of those _freaks_."

From the sidelines another soldier chimed in. "I heard they all died a couple days ago during surgery!"

"Really? So why is this freak here?" The soldier turned to John. "We're you the only one to not go under the knife? We're you too scared? Did you leave the rest of those kids behind?"

There was no reaction save a slight tightening of the jaw.

From the corner of the room Asuka tugged on Kaji's pant leg. "Let's go back to the pool, this is getting boring. I thought they were going to fight!"

Kaji shushed his young charge. If the boy really was the Spartan… It would be interesting to say the least to watch him fight; especially after the much talked about augmentations. "Calm down Asuka, it's going to happen soon. I can feel it."

The unkempt man was right.

The ODST threw the first punch and it was all over. He went flying backwards 8 meters, crashing through the elastic ropes of the boxing ring and into the wall. No one had even seen the Spartan move. One of the onlooking ODST's ran to his fellow soldier and felt for a pulse. The prone soldier's grey T-shirt was quickly turning red. Several ribs had been shattered and punctured the skin of the man.

"He's… No pulse! What the Hell?"

Everyone turned to the boy, the Spartan, the murderer. His eyes were still impassive, expression harsh and stony. He didn't say a word.

Asuka, once smiling, now had a horrified expression on her face. She cowered behind Kaji's leg, trembling. This was the first time she had seen a dead man.

"That guy, he's going to be okay. Right?"

Kaji had no response.

Angry over the death of their friend and fellow soldier the 4 remaining ODST attacked.

It was much the same as before. The ODST's had the numerical advantage, but that didn't matter. Even at this stage, unused to his surgeries and just beginning his recovery, John could have torn apart a hundred ODST's.

Kaji bent down and covered Asuka's head, protecting her from the scenes of violence and gore.

The earlier comments must have gotten to the Spartan in some way, for he was especially brutal now.

He ducked under a kick and swept his leg in response. The man's ankle shattered under the force, and crumpled to the ground. Dumbfounded that he be crippled by an 11 year old.

The man's companion was no luckier. He didn't even have the chance to fight when a bare elbow crushed his nose and pulped his cheekbones into nothingness. Red ran down his face.

The other two ran away.

John stood there with the three cripples and looked at them for a good while until his gaze finally settled on Kaji and the crying Asuka.

"You shouldn't be here."

Kaji rushed the girl out of the weight room. John was _one_ scary 11 year old.

* * *

 _2015_

Shinji sat in the plug, uncomfortable in his skin tight bodysuit and not at all ready to fight. It was hard to focus. The communications system mumbled the various preparations that the technicians down in mission control had to complete for him to surface in the purple war machine. It was familiar, he had done this several times before now, both in simulations and before fighting Sachiel. Familiarity breeds contempt.

He didn't want to be sitting there in the plug, surrounded by orange-red LCL fluid smelling, tasting blood. But it had to be him. The Chief was right. No matter how much Shinji hated being in the purple Evangelion, there was simply no one else for the job. It was his _duty_ to fight, he couldn't just leave everyone in Tokyo-3 to die because of his selfishness. There were a million souls resting on Shinji's shoulders and the weight was terribly, terribly heavy. He shrugged.

"Release restraints."

"Stabilizing LCL pressure."

"Launching Eva!"

* * *

Shinji didn't know it was possible to feel such pain. His hands, the Eva's hands, wrapped around the burning hot wires that were the arms of the Third Angel.

He dimly registered Misato screaming at him over the communications system.

"Those aren't your hands! Get a hold of yourself!"

' _It doesn't matter if it isn't real it feels real! it hurts oh god it hurts please make it stop i just want to let go let go let go let go LET GO'_

He didn't let go. The laser arms continued to burn painfully in his hands. The stakes were high. This wasn't a simulation any more. He had to win, it was his duty.

There was a roar that sounded more like a cry for help and Shinji headbutted the monster standing in front of him. Unsurprisingly, the orange glow of the A.T. field stopped the desperate attack. All the while the sharp throb of pain in Shinji's hands grew larger and larger, spreading farther up his arm as nerves screamed in protest.

He finally let go and instantaneously threw a punch at the monster. Once again he was blocked by the Angel's powerful A.T. field. Shinji winced at the aching reverberation rippling through his fist. He jumped backwards several times, backtracking through the city and putting distance between the Angel and himself.

"Fuck!" Shinji cursed his displeasure at the sight of the Angel swinging the purple vines. The tops of buildings were lopped off and Shinji took advantage of the newfound rubble by throwing the roofs of two skyscrapers at the Angel.

There it was again. The A.T. field.

"Misato, how can I hurt this thing?" Shinji glanced at the power gauge and was relieved to find that the Eva was still plugged in.

"You have to neutralize its A.T. field before you try anything!"

The suggestion was obvious. Shinji had destroyed many A.T. fields during his simulation training against the copy of the Third Angel. The Fourth however was proving to be a separate challenge.

Shinji had been able to brute force through the A.T. field without sustaining too much damage from the Third, but trying to do that against the squid shaped monster here would be suicide. Here the flailing laser arms did too much damage. Just a touch from the pink laser wires would scour Unit-01's armor, leaving deep grooves.

' _If only I had a weapon…'_ Shinji thought to himself. Using his bare hands to tear through the A.T. field would leave himself vulnerable for too long. "That's it!"

"What's it Shinji?"

The Third Child reached for the shoulder pylon and gave the command for the Progressive Knife to deploy. While a week ago he wouldn't have known how to use a knife past ' _stick them with the pointy end'_ , John had drilled into him how to hold and handle a blade rather recently. The knife weighed heavy in his hands.

"Shinji, that's way too dangerous! The Angel doesn't seem to have any long range capabilities, going close range is unacceptable! Retreat and we'll send you up another gun." Of course Misato was in charge of all Evangelion combat operations, but Shinji didn't hear her.

Only the low _thump_ of his heart and the high pitched screaming of the Prog Knife. Even from this distance it was easy to see the Angel. It slashed its appendages and cut a building in four pieces, all the while facing Shinji with its exposed red core, glowing like an evil eye. Shinji disengaged the power cord. He would need all the mobility possible and a dangling cord would not help.

He charged, covering the hundreds of meters within seconds.

Shamshel gave a full bodied swipe of its arm, aiming for the torso of the charging Evangelion. The maneuver was familiar to Shinji, muscle memory born through sparring with John took over and Shinji rolled under the Angel's arm and lunged from his crouch in one fluid, practiced movement.

The knife was in his left, held in reverse grip, and trailed behind the robot. With his right Shinji punched the Angel's A.T. field, shattering it completely with the momentum of his jump and the force of the punch combined. From then on the fight was over. A quick horizontal swipe of the knife severed Shamshel's right arm, causing it to curl inwardly in pain. Shinji stabbed the glassy red core of the Angel on the return of his arm.

The Angel's core stopped glowing.

Shinji had won. The timer in the plug quickly reached the end, and even though the Eva was left powerless without it's cable, Shinji felt powerful.

In the dark, surrounded by the blood of an Angel, embraced by steel, baptized in purple and green; Ikari Shinji cried.

 **AN: A note about Spartan surgeries. In '** _ **Forget your fears'**_ **, John is the only surviving Spartan because the augmentation process was much more invasive and dangerous than in canon Halo. Since John is so lucky all the time, he miraculously survives. As a result is much more durable than before. He'll have a lot of the traits (quick healing, solid ribs, etc) of a Space Marine except for the 'learning by eating' and being able to spit acid.**

 **I don't think I'm really any good at writing fight scenes. When you're giving feedback on this story, please critique the fight scenes I wrote.**

 **Thanks for reading.**


	5. Chapter 5: Set normal text as

**Chapter 5: Set normal text as.**

 **Chapter teaser: Seele makes a plan. Date time. Shinji and John must stop Jet Alone.**

 **BrokenLifeCycle: There's a reason why John has Space Marine implants, I need him ridiculously overpowered later on.**

" **Perkodhuskurunbarggruauyagokgorlayorgromgremmitghundhurthrumathunaradidillifaititillibumullunukkunun" - James Joyce (Finnegans Wake)**

"What do you think he will do when he finds out?"

The room was dark save for the seven monoliths surrounding Gendo Ikari's table. They were talking about the Spartan.

"There's no way for me to know that, is there?" The Nerv commander's face was impassive, seemingly unintimidated by the mysterious surroundings.

Pillar 01 lit up, each word annunciated followed by its pillar glowing ever more brightly. "The Spartan is _your_ soldier. Are you to tell us that you cannot control even that? Sierra-117 is a boy of only 17, you _must_ be able to control him."

Gendo's hands went close to his face, fingers drumming together, it certainly fit his image.

"You only say such things because you do not have to deal with him. He is no normal 17 year old, a child such as my son can be controlled but John is different. He may very well decide to kill everyone involved in this _project_ that you are suggesting if he finds out, and we would be powerless to stop him." Gendo paused and looked around the room at the seven glowing pillars, "Nerv would not survive if the Spartan decided to betray us."

The scoff of Pillar 04 turned into static over the speakers, "You have at your disposal the military budget that rivals the GDP of some nations, even a Spartan cannot defeat an army on his own."

The retort was biting and unexpectedly, from Seele 06. "He _has_ done it before. Don't you remember Sri Lanka? Sierra-117 killed _six hundred_ men, trained soldiers all of them, by himself last time he was sent there."

The Commander cut in, "You wanted soldiers capable of killing armies, and now you have one. For the most part John does follow orders, but I cannot promise that he will not go rogue if Seele goes through with this plan."

"How else can we make an Evangelion unit that the Spartan is capable of piloting? Each existing Eva has a soul implanted into it, what would be better than to use Catherine Halsey's soul in building an Evangelion specifically for Sierra-117? None in this room can deny that he would make an excellent pilot. There would not be a threat that he could not deal with." Said Seele 04.

There were murmurs of assent throughout the room. It was undeniable, a boy such as John would almost certainly excel as a pilot. The threat of Angel's would be basically non-existent should he have an Evangelion unit of his own. And Instrumentality would come all the more easily…

"It is decided," said Seele 01, "Dr. Halsey will have an unfortunate _accident_ sometime during the coming week. Her soul will be harvested and put into a new Evangelion. Gendo, you will have the responsibility of making sure that the Spartan remains ignorant to Halsey's death. Meeting adjourned."

But despite the machinations of Seele or Gendo, the fact remains that the truth will always be made known. Eventually.

* * *

Shinji ducked out of reflex and lashed out with a punch directed at his assailant's gut. For once he managed land a blow and he smiled in his success. ' _Finally, I got in a hit!'_

His distraction earned him a knee to the chest, sending the Eva pilot crashing to the polished wood floor, winded and wincing.

"Don't let your guard down," the Spartan leaned down and extended a hand to the downed pilot, helping him up, "especially after a hit like that. You have good timing, good instincts," John commented, "but you don't have the weight to down someone with a simple hit to the stomach."

The boy tried to catch his breath and took the offered hand, smiling through the pain in his stomach. "... I'll make sure to remember that."

John stared. It would have been an awkward moment, but Shinji knew that it wasn't meant in an awkward way. John always looked out of place when he wasn't in his armor. Eternally too tall, too intimidating, and blind to social convention, the Spartan just didn't fit in.

"Uh, John?"

There was a slow nod as a response and Shinji took it to mean that John was listening.

"Well, Misato isn't going to be home tomorrow, she said something about some Nerv thing… Anyways, are you free tomorrow? We can like hang out or something after school is over."

Shinji sounded hopeful. Despite his popularity as an Evangelion pilot, the respect his classmates held for him was superficial. In fact, Shinji's status as a pilot likely scared many off from really opening up and befriending the boy.

"We'll see."

* * *

"Shinji really has changed hasn't he." Misato peered over the bleached blonde doctor's shoulder at a sheet of paper. It was a series of reports on the pilots.

They had three lined up so far. Ayanami, Rei. Soryu, Asuka Langley. Ikari, Shinji. On paper they were just words, letters, numbers and measurements. It was easy to forget that they were people, children who lived and felt pain just as much as anyone else.

Ritsuko sighed in false annoyance. "Well, he's grown three inches since he got here. I had to fit him for a new Plug Suit a couple days ago."

"Is that normal? I've noticed him getting taller, bigger too… I'll probably need to go take him shopping when I come back."

"According to all of the data, LCL stimulates cellular growth to an extreme degree. Since Shinji is a pilot, he's submerged in LCL all the time. It's only normal that he's growing faster than a normal boy that age."

It was really only a guess. Testing the effect of LCL on human's hadn't been a priority following the discovery of the liquid; killing Angels had been.

Misato sounded worried. "It's not just that though. He's been acting different too. More aggressive, maybe even confident. He's still the quiet kid that he was when he got here, but when you really push him, he get's mad. He argues back and it's kinda scary when he does."

"I'm not a psychiatrist Misato. If you think he's unstable, get the kid to a shrink."

It wasn't just that. Misato wanted to yell at Ritsuko, but what good would that do? Shinji had changed on a fundamental level. But was he angrier, or was that anger always there, always hidden under the veneer of polite helpfulness that Shinji had cultivated? She didn't want to believe it but it seemed likely. How much anger did the young pilot hold? Years of neglect and abandonment must have built up only to be capped by Shinji's mask of submissiveness and passivity. And now that mask was cracking and that bottled rage was a terrible thing to behold.

"I think I need a drink."

* * *

Shinji stepped into the hallway and heard the pneumatic hiss of the door closing behind him. It was 2:36 AM and the pilot couldn't sleep. Misato had left earlier that night to catch her plane and Shinji was all alone.

The air inside the apartment complex was slightly stale and chilly. Despite the altered climate of Tokyo-3 due to Second Impact, the nights were still cold. Shinji shivered and pulled his thin windbreaker closer to his chest. Track 25 was playing.

This had become a habit for the teenager. The city at night was so much more alive than during the day. The sun was dead and the stars were out and the neon lights of the city ate away at the darkness of night.

' _Am I happy?'_ There wasn't anyone to talk to this late at night. The people still awake and wandering the city weren't the type of people that Shinji wanted to talk to.

He decided that he was. Life in Tokyo-3 was infinitely preferable to his previous accommodations back with his old caretaker. Back when life was slow and grey and one dimensional. The city made everything bright, from the lights to the people and even the Angel attacks. The danger and _newness_ of everything was dazzling, spicy, Shinji found himself falling more and more in love every day.

For the first time in a long time Shinji was happy.

All around him walked the drunkards and prostitutes and lowlifes that came out only when the sun went down. The crowds were thin but the people were interesting.

Painted women standing under the orange lights on street corners called out to him, peddling their wares; those that recognized him as a pilot gave him words of encouragement and thankfulness. One drug addled mind, too drunk to even walk, grabbed the pilot by the ankle and spoke of him "utmoscht reschpect". Shinji blushed and walked on, only able to stammer a brief word of thanks.

It felt good living in the city. The city that Shinji had saved through toil and pain and fighting the alien foe that threatened life as humanity enjoyed it.

It was 3:00 AM now according to Shinji's watch, but he didn't care. School tomorrow didn't really matter compared to how happy he was right now. Happy to be alone. Happy to be alive. For now.

* * *

Shinji woke with a start, pain streaking across his head.

"Wake up! You can't sleep in class!" The class representative, Hikari Horaki was holding a ruler in her hand menacingly, seemingly ready to hit Shinji over the head again.

He groaned, walking around the city all night hadn't been a good idea.

"Uh… I was up all night for Nerv stuff, can't I get a pass?" The lie came more easily than it would have in the past when Shinji was more insecure.

There came a look of thankfulness that flashed across Hikari's face, but it quickly gave way to sternness. "No way! You have to deal with _all_ of your responsibilities, you can't shirk school just because you're tired."

Shinji groaned in irritation, aware that the whole class was now watching his chastisement. "Fine…"

The class representative went back to her seat and the lesson commenced as if nothing had happened. Shinji tried his best to focus on the teacher's lecture, but it was boring… He found himself nodding off again despite his best efforts.

No! He had to stay awake, that class representative was way too scary to risk being yelled at again. Yawning, he stretched his arms out and noticed a tapping at his shoulder and a faint whisper.

"Hey, Shinji-kun?"

It was a girl. Haruhi, he thought her name was. Things got very interesting, very quickly and Shinji sat up straight and blushed.

"Yes?" He whispered back softly, excited and scared at the same time.

Haruhi was quiet but confident, "Do you want to hang out after school?"

' _Oh yes!'_ In his excitement, Shinji forgot that he had made plans with John for that afternoon.

"Yeah, definitely."

Across the classroom another boy, jealous and angry, glared at the Nerv pilot.

* * *

"Psychologically speaking, Shinji is certainly very impressionable."

Misato and Ritsuko were waiting now. They had arrived several hours early and had been rather unprofessionally left in the meeting room for the rest of the members of the Jet Alone conference.

The Nerv Captain stared at a clock on the wall. Seemed like there were only 20 minutes left until the rest of the conference members would arrive.

"Why do you say that?"

Ritsuko drummed her fingers on the expensive wood of the table. "Think of it this way," the blonde doctor stopped a moment to think, "Shinji hasn't had any _male_ role models in his life right?"

Misato thought on it. "Yeah, I guess so. I hear that he lived with his teacher before he came to Tokyo-3, but I don't think they were very close. And we both know he's not close to his father."

"Exactly," said Ritsuko, "Shinji hasn't had any male role models in his life, and now he has John." It was a scary thought, an Evangelion pilot modeling himself after the Spartan.

"I guess that does explain a lot. Shinji _has_ been acting kind of like John. Quiet, more serious, definitely more aggressive when he's annoyed." Misato leaned back in her chair, "well, there's worse role models Shinji could have."

"Like you? And John's a terrible role model for a young boy." Ritsuko snipped.

The blush Misato sported contrasted nicely with her purple hair. "I'm not _that_ bad a role model… How's John a bad role model?" For all the Spartan's social awkwardness and unwitting coldness, he was reliable and responsible; more so than people twice his age. Why wouldn't that be a something for the 14 year old Eva pilot to emulate?

Ritsuko tsked. "You think it's a good thing for Shinji to act like John? The Spartan program was a _damn_ mistake if you ask me. John's a brick! He has no tact, he doesn't know how to act towards other people. Shinji acting like that is bad news." The doctor huffed, because of her position as John's chief doctor, she knew better than most what John was really like. "Haven't you read the reports? John isn't mentally stable. Only God knows how much underlying PTSD he has, not to mention everything _else_ wrong with him."

"You can't be serious, I'll admit John's a little strange, but isn't that pretty normal for someone in his shoes? And just what else _is_ wrong with him?" Misato was curious, she hadn't really had the time to go over the recently declassified _Spartan_ report that detailed John's full health profile.

The doctor grimaced. "It'd take hours to tell you, read the reports."

"Come on, just tell me one thing. He isn't that bad, maybe if you talked to him outside of his checkups…"

"Okay then, I'll tell you _one_ thing that plagues our ' _Invincible Super Soldier'_. But you should really be reading those reports, That's part of your job."

Misato had the decency to look embarrassed.

"One of the surgeries included a platinum pellet infused with growth hormones being planted on his pituitary gland."

Because Misato wasn't really an intellectual, the nuances of hormonal imbalances went over her head. "Wouldn't that just make him grow a lot? It worked didn't it?"

Akagi looked thoughtful, wondering how to explain the situation to her friend and colleague. "Well… The main side effect of that surgery is that it represses his sex drive. A lot. I don't think John can even _understand_ the concept of human attraction, of love."

Wow. Shinji was emulating _that_? A man who couldn't love or be loved? What a terrifying thought.

* * *

"So, what did you want to do?" Shinji didn't stutter or fumble his words any more, even in the presence of a pretty girl.

His 'date', Haruhi ran a hand through her long brown hair, she had curled it today, and it looked very, very good. "I just wanted to get to know you better, maybe get something to eat… You're pretty cool you know, like, you're the pilot for the Evangelion and you're the hero of Tokyo-3…"

Shinji's heart sank, but only a little. He should have figured that girls were only interested because of his position at Nerv. Still, the bitter taste in his mouth went away after he swallowed for a moment. It didn't mean he couldn't enjoy talking to Haruhi right?

"Piloting is pretty tough, I don't really like it all that much." Shinji noticed that Haruhi had a slight frown on her face at those words, as if her expectations were not met. "I don't do it for glory or because I enjoy it or anything. Even thought I hate piloting, it makes me feel good knowing that _I'm_ helping people, saving people. You get what I'm saying?"

Haruhi smiled brightly again, her faith in Shinji's heroism restored. "Yeah, I _totally_ understand! It must be so scary piloting the Eva! I saw a picture of the first Angel that you fought on the news one time. It looked _dangerous_!"

Starved of attention for so long, Shinji found that he rather enjoyed talking to a pretty girl, even if she was only interested in his fame. "It's not really dangerous, I haven't really been seriously injured piloting the Eva," Shinji paused, "you know Rei Ayanami in our class?"

The girl nodded her head vigorously, "don't tell me… She's a pilot too?" The bluenette in question was a strange one, most of the other girls at school didn't like her, either jealous of her icy beauty or unnerved by her stony silence.

Shinji gave a noise of affirment, "yeah, she's actually my senior when it comes to piloting. You remember with all those bandages and casts right? She didn't get them from fighting an Angel, it was actually during a test in her Evangelion unit. The last Angel though, that was the first time I really got hurt fighting an Angel."

"What happened?" said Haruhi as she motioned Shinji to follow her to an outdoor cafe table nearby.

"The Fifth Angel, Ramiel, fired a giant laser at me. It was so hot that it ended up boiling the LCL around me, I had light burns all over my body."

Haruhi didn't know what LCL was, but she nodded this time in concern. "Awww, you poor thing…"

The pilot simply shook his head. "That's not even the worst part about piloting Eva. The worst thing is that I can feel everything happening to the robot."

"No…"

"Yeah, when Ramiel shot me with it's laser, or when the Fourth Angel stabbed me through the hand and stomach… I felt every bit of pain."

It felt good to complain, maybe even brag a little about his piloting escapades. It got him attention, sympathy, two things he hadn't experienced for a long time.

In an unexpected movement, the brown haired girl sprang from her chair and gave Shinji a hug, pressing her body against his.

For the first time that afternoon, Shinji blushed a vibrant red.

"Um… Y-you don't have to do that…"

Haruhi pulled back and ruffled Shinji's hair, smiling prettily. "It's the least I can do for you _Mr. Hero._ "

There was a tense moment where neither of the two teenagers knew what to do.

"I, uh—"

Shinji's words were interrupted by a black car pulling up to the curb. The driver's side door opened and a man in a black suit stepped towards the pair. It was Section 2, Nerv's intelligence branch and de facto security force for the Evangelion pilots.

"Mr. Ikari, you're being requested at Nerv."

Shinji looked a little guilty. "I, gotta return some videotapes! Sorry Haruhi, I'll talk to you later!" he said while following the Section 2 agent.

"Don't worry about it! Go save the day _Mr. Hero!_ "

* * *

Shinji sat in the familiar Entry Plug of Unit-01, which was rather precariously attached to the bottom of a supersized SR-71 specifically designed to ferry Evangelion units from place to place. Unit-00 was still too damaged to be used in an operation.

"Tell me again what's happening?" asked Shinji. He was still rather annoyed that his date with Haruhi had been cut short.

Misato spoke to him over the communications system. "There's been an incident with the _Jet Alone_ project. Something's wrong with the machine, the Evangelion is the only thing we have that's able to stop it."

"Just what is Jet Alone?"

"John, please explain." Misato knew that John had an uncanny ability to somehow know about everything even vaguely military related.

There was a moment's pause before John began. "Jet Alone. A bipedal robot built by Japan Heavy Chemical Industries as a safer and more effective alternative to the Evangelions. Fueled by a nuclear reactor, it is capable of operating for around 150 days. There is no pilot, rather an onboard computer controls the robot."

One could practically hear Misato nodding in agreement. "Right, _that's_ Jet Alone. It was being field tested today but due to a computer glitch, it's now out of control and it's reactor is overheating. We have a security code that will hopefully stop the machine in it's tracks, but for some reason, the remote signal isn't getting through. We'll have to have it manually inserted."

Shinji was still confused. "Where does Unit-01 and me come into play? I don't think I'll be able to type in a password on a computer terminal in Unit-01."

"Like I said before, only the Evangelion is capable of stopping it. We're going to have you carry John to the machine and he'll be able to enter the security code." said Misato.

John cut in. "We don't have much time. Jet Alone is approaching the point where a nuclear meltdown will be unavoidable. Shinji, I'm going to grab onto Unit-01's shoulder pauldron. Once you drop down, engage Jet Alone and immobilize it so that I can get onto it."

Shinji nodded grimly. A nuclear meltdown would be disastrous in post-Second Impact Japan. Already much of the Japanese landmass had been taken away by the rise in sea levels, nuclear fallout would mean a huge area uninhabitable and unusable, let alone the loss of life that would be felt in the neighboring cities. He understood his duties.

* * *

"I can't hold it back much longer John!" Shinji's voice screamed, so loud it seemed to echo through John's helmet. Unit-01 and Jet Alone struggled for dominance.

The plan had gone so far without a hitch. Shinji's landing was perfect, having been taught how to do so safely during Shinji's various training sessions with the Spartan. And again, Shinji had been able to wrestle Jet Alone to the ground, using a rather tricky leg lock that he had mastered recently. All that was left was for John to put in the code.

"Where's the computer Misato?" asked John.

Several miles away Misato consulted a schematic that Japan Heavy Chemical Industries had provided. "It should be similar to the position of the Entry Plug on the Evangelion. There's a grey entry hatch that you should be able to force open."

John nodded, not that Misato could see it. He sprinted along the arm of the Evangelion and made a flying leap to its white armored enemy, quickly scaling the gargantuan machine. The various movements of the two robots made it difficult to climb upwards.

"You have around 3 minutes until Unit-01 shuts down John! Maybe 10 or 15 until the reactor blows!" Misato's panicked advice wasn't very reassuring. While John had survived a point-blank nuclear explosion during his stunt against the Third Angel, the bomb he had used back then was a _miniature_ nuclear weapon. He didn't know if a full scale nuclear disaster happened, if he would survive.

Finally John arrived at the grey opening hatch of Jet Alone. He balled his fist and struck the heavy hatch several times, so hard that the metal screeched and ripped after the third hit. The Spartan grabbed onto the handles on either side of the hatch and kicked in the ruined door, all the while accounting for the shifting of the massive robot. He was in.

The inside of Jet Alone was an angry red, filled with irradiated water and vapor and the terrible blaring of a thousand emergency protocols broken. John quickly waded through the radioactive water towards the computer terminal. And entered the security code, _Hope._ Nothing happened, except for Jet Alone suddenly jerking upright.

"John! Unit-01 ran out of power! Hurry up and put in the code!"

The Spartan tried again, feeling foolish as he double checked the he had put in the four letter code in correctly.

"It isn't working. How long do I have until the reactor reaches the critical point?" he asked, sounding calm even in the most desperate of situations.

"Just hurry! Try pushing in the emergency control rods, Ritsuko thinks that should cool them down!"

John approached the indium-silver rods, there were over 100 of them, each rod usually used an elaborate system of mechanisms to secure them in their emergency positions, but with the computer malfunctioning, the mechanisms really just blocked the rods from being pushed in. There were literal feet of heavy wires and plates and gears that refused to move, each one working in oblivious tandem to make life harder.

A black gloved hand, armored in olive green grasped the first rod. And _pushed_. There came sparks and the nail-on-chalkboard sound of metal sliding across unlubricated metal. The first control rod in place, John quickly moved to the next one, aware that he didn't have time to check if the reactor's temperature was dropping.

The second. Third. Fourth. Fifth… The HUD of the MJOLNIR armor read that the ambient temperature was holding steady, how many control rods would John have to push in?

John rushed through 10 more before Misato spoke to him. "Reactor core seems to have stabilized! Push the rest in just in case, you did great today. Both of you."

Shinji's relieved laughter rang out, his Evangelion didn't have enough energy for combat, but communications was a light weight process compared to rapid movement.

Another disaster averted. All in a day's work.

* * *

"Thank God we had John there! If we didn't, I would have had to get into an anti-radiation suit and climb into the reactor room myself!" said Misato through a swishing mouthful of Yebisu brand beer.

John and Shinji both ignored the Nerv Captain who was growing more and more drunk as the evening went on. Normally John would call out the degenerate behaviour, but even he knew that soldiers all celebrated in different ways.

"You did well today Shinji. Very good use of a double leg takedown." Compliments from the Master Chief were very rare, but Shinji knew that when they were given, they were meant with sincerity.

Shinji was proud, for the first time he actually felt good about piloting the Evangelion itself. Maybe it had to do with the fact that he hadn't felt any major injuries this time?

"It was nothing, I just did my job…" It was more than that to Shinji. His duty to himself had been fulfilled today. Piloting the Eva had resulted in real, concrete good. Usually his adventures in the robot ended up destroying half of Tokyo-3 and making the young pilot feel extraordinarily guilty; but today had been all gain for Shinji. He had helped so many people today in his part in averting nuclear disaster.

He still had a reason to live.

 **AN: Wow that took a long time to write. Next chapter will finally be introducing Asuka; my eagerness to finally start writing scenes with her made me really rush this chapter…**

 **I assure you, John won't be getting an Evangelion of his own to pilot with Halsey's soul in it. I have major plans for Seele's particular plan.**

 **Regarding John's surgeries, they aren't the canon Spartan ones. They are from the Warhammer 40K franchise, Space Marines are the one's to get them. There were a couple reasons why I gave him Space Marine augments. Firstly because I thought they were pretty cool. Secondly, John has need to be much more physically durable later on in the story.**

 **Thanks for reading another chapter. Please review.**


	6. Chapter 6: Theory of B-I-T-C-H

**Chapter 6: Fundamental theory of b-i-t-c-h**

 **Teaser: Rei talks to Shinji. Rei's Ramiel flashback! More Seele plans. Unit-02 arrives.**

" **A screaming comes across the sky." - Thomas Pynchon**

The tank drained clear of LCL.

"You can get out now Rei, the Dummy Plug system is successfully updated." Dr. Akagi didn't look up from her clipboard. She didn't like looking at the blue haired Eva pilot. Too much hate.

The clear plastic curve of the LCL tank swung forward smoothly on well maintained hinges, making way for the occupant of the tank to step out. Ayanami, Rei: the First Child, key to Instrumentality.

Disregarding both nudity and the orange Angel blood quickly growing uncomfortably cold on her pale skin, Rei stood in front of the doctor. Ready for any instructions or commands.

Ritsuko shivered, catching a glimpse of Rei out of the corner of her eye. Everyone said that the Spartan was the perfect soldier, but the doctor knew that it was Rei who held that title. Poor, blue, Rei Ayanami. Human clone of the Commander's lost love. Kept under control through years of conditioning and suicide loads of depressants and mood-stabilizers. There wasn't any danger to Rei's body though. Being a result of the unholy fusion of human and Angel, her body was unnaturally able to adapt to the side effects.

"Do you have anything for me, Dr. Akagi?"

That voice. Polite, disgustingly polite; as if the speaker wasn't a person at all. There was no personality, no feeling betrayed by that awful voice. Just the dead obedience of a girl who knew nothing else than to obey.

"Well, I know you haven't been to school in a while, so make sure you go tomorrow. At this stage of the scenario, keeping up appearances is important. And if you can, tell the Third Child that he's wanted for a synch test in two days time." Ritsuko unconsciously put her pen in her mouth and took an empty drag. Smoking wasn't permitted in this room, but the habit was far too ingrained to stop.

"Understood." Silence.

* * *

Shinji ate lunch with Haruhi and her friends. He didn't know them all too well, but it was flattering having been invited to eat with a group of _girls._

"So Shinji, how's that Angel fighting business?"

He was determined to be liked by people for a change, and answered to the best of his ability. "It's good I guess. I mean, we're all still here right?" He joked awkwardly.

Haruhi laughed loudly, too loudly for it to have been sincere. More than one person in that lunch circle was determined to be liked.

"Ikari-san." Rei's voice was cool and steady as it always was. Her expression betrayed nothing.

In the fact of such apathy, the girls around Shinji felt small and unimportant, happy to let the pilots talk.

"Um… We'll see you later Shinji, if _Ayanami_ is coming to talk to you, it must be secret Nerv stuff." Haruhi and her friends waved and left quickly.

The silence was awkward and Shinji couldn't stand it for much longer. "Nice job with the Fifth Angel, I wouldn't have been able to shoot it without you... " Shinji looked at his feet, unable to meet Rei's steely glance.

"Thank you for your compliment. Your concern after the fight was admirable and most welcome."

Shinji couldn't tell if what Rei was saying was sincere or just meaningless conversation, she was unreadable. By now the classroom he had been eating in was empty, Rei had cleared it out somehow. The pilot looked at his lunch and realized that he wasn't hungry anymore.

"So," Shinji cleared his throat, "what did you want to talk about today?"

Another moment of silence. "You have a synchronization test scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Dr. Akagi asked me to inform you." Her task complete, Rei turned and made to leave the classroom.

"Wait a minute, Rei!" Shinji called after the departing girl.

Rei turned around. "What is it Pilot Ikari?" The wording implied that she was annoyed, but her tone was as impassive as ever.

What a headache.

"Do you want to hang out with me sometime? You can eat lunch with Haruhi and me… I never see you around with anyone else, and we're both pilots so I just thought—"

Shinji stopped his babbling as soon as he saw Rei's hand go up.

"Thank you for your offer, but I have been ordered not to associate myself with you unless absolutely necessary."

' _What!'_ But before Shinji could ask why, Rei was gone.

* * *

What makes a human? Could it simply the form? Two arms, two legs, opposable thumbs, large prefrontal cortex? No, there's something more to it. Human beings are not simply human beings because of how they look.

Maybe it is free will that determines what a human being is. The ability to choose one over the other, for better or worse, to live with the consequences of action and reaction. The existential ultimatum; let me be free or die. That's not it either. Even rats make choices each day. Man is not man simply because his capability to choose.

Some will submit man's ability to reason that sets them apart from the beasts of field and fallow. Objectively that's incorrect. Once again animals prove to be far more innovative than humans give credit. Chimpanzees will use twigs to root for termites. Ravens will fill cups with stones to be able to drink hidden waters. Desperation breeds invention and innovation in all lifeforms.

Man is man because of their unrivaled capacity to feel. Human emotions range from love, compassion, warmth, and gentleness to greed and murderous intent. Wars are waged. Diseases are cured. People die and fall in love everyday. Animals can't feel to this degree. Human beings can claim to be the masters of the world because they can feel.

Rei Ayanami is _not_ a human being because she cannot feel. The chemical lobotomies and suicide load of pills she is proscribed makes sure of that. Of course she looks the part she plays, the not-so-average 14 year old pilot of humanity's greatest weapon. But despite her human figure, she cannot be considered such. She cannot even be considered to be on level with an animal for Rei Ayanami cannot make her own decisions. Her life is not her own. Rei cannot reason unless allowed, for reasoning will lead to dissenting thoughts. Even an animal can deliberate. But most of all, the First Child cannot feel. She cannot love so she cannot be loved. She is alone in her room in the empty apartment complex. Thinking coldly, without feeling, without love.

* * *

 _Flashback_

Like so much about Rei Ayanami, the water from the showerhead was lukewarm, just hot enough to cause a light steam to billow out from behind the shower curtain, but not enough to be soothing. Lukewarm. Boring. Rei didn't care too much.

She brought the plain bar of soap to her body and scrubbed. Arms, legs, those crevices in between, being clean was necessary to keep up appearances; something that Rei did not particularly care for, but understood to be necessary to the Commander's scenario. The First would do anything for the scenario.

Rei stepped out of the shower, into the bathroom proper, careful not to step on an errant corner of the broken ceramic tiles that lined the floor. It wouldn't do to become injured so soon after she had been allowed to remove her bandages from her previous wounds.

The towel on the rack was much like the rest of Rei's possessions, white and boring and plain. She toweled herself off, wiping her torso and extremities of excess water before focusing on her cropped hair. There hadn't been any reason to bath today, Rei hadn't done anything physically intensive enough for her to have built up a sweat or even get dirty; and of course, her Re-activation test was to happen in a couple of hours, so she would have to shower after that anyways.

Still, Rei had been informed many years ago that it was important to be clean for formal events didn't the reactivation of Unit-00 count? She stepped into her hallway, the white towel the only thing covering her modesty, preparing to change and make her way to the test.

Confusion reigned on the First's face. Perhaps for the first time she had another human being inside her home. It was the Third Child, one Shinji Ikari if Rei remembered correctly. Strange, but ultimately unimportant. Something small and brown in the Third's hand caught her eye. Were those _glasses?_ Rei's vision shifted to the small drawer where she had left the pair of glasses that the Commander had allowed her to keep. They weren't there. She acted instinctively, no real anger or hate in her movements, even if the Third Child had violated her privacy, Rei walked across the room in a brisk pace. The towel around her shoulders slipped from their perch and wavered through the air, landing wetly on the ground.

Shinji's face was bright red, embarrassed beyond measure. He had never expected his first time with a naked girl to be like this!

In his surprise, Shinji stepped backwards, foot tripping awkwardly against the drawer behind him. He fell forward, something warm and soft cushioning his tumble.

Shinji knew what it was under his hand, but his face was turned to the side, away from reality. Yes, he could just write this off as an accident…

"Could you please get off of me?" Rei's voice was exceedingly polite, almost frostily so.

Shinji couldn't exactly blame her for sounding so cold.

"Sorry." He got up carefully so as not to touch anything else. "Are you okay? I mean, I did fall on you after all." Shinji averted his eyes, fully expecting Ayanami to slap him. He felt more shame than fear of feminine retribution.

There was no response. Shinji thought the First Child to be eerily reminiscent of John before the pilot had gotten to know him.

Rei simply extended her hand. "Glasses." She said.

"Oh, right. Sorry about that, I just thought that they looked like my dad's."

"They are."

Shinji looked surprised. "My dad gave you his old glasses? Are you two close?" Indignation replaced his embarrassment over Rei's nudity. Had his father been so callous as to have replaced him with Rei?

The fall had knocked over a shelf of her drawer. Female undergarments were strewn around the room. Rei looked impassively at them.

"He is my commanding officer, nothing more." If Rei could feel, surely the truth would have been a knife.

The Third Child looked confused and hurt. "...Right. Um, just get changed and we can go to your Re-activation test." Rei's new Nerv identification card sat forgotten in Shinji's pocket. "I have to go with you, just in case… You know."

Rei nodded, half listening and barely caring. "Please allow me to put on some clothes."

* * *

The two Evangelion pilots walked in tandem, in silence. They arrived at the metal terminal and gate to enter Nerv headquarters.

Rei frowned in confusion. The terminal would not open for her. She scanned her card against the interface a second time. Still the gate remained closed.

"Here Rei." The Third Child passed her a rectangular piece of plastic with Ayanami's relevant information printed on it. It was an I.D. for Nerv. Identical to the outdated one in her hand save for an expiration date several years later.

She nodded and scanned her new card. The door slid open seamlessly. No problems so far. Hopefully the reactivation test would go just as well.

They got onto the escalator, rather inefficient compared to a elevator.

Shinji fidgeted with a button on his shirt. How to approach this? He thought for a moment how John would handle it and decided to ask straightforwardly.

"Hey Ayanami?"

The girl turned around. Saying nothing, face stone.

"Aren't you scared of getting back in the Evangelion? I mean, you got hurt pretty badly the last time you were in it." By this point, Shinji was used to expressionlessness, both Rei and John were very stoic.

"Don't you trust your father? It is unlikely he would put either of his pilots in unnecessary danger."

"Of course I don't trust him! How could I?" Shinji yelled, immediately becoming defensive. He saw the hand coming in for the long deserved slap and jerked his head backwards in a clean dodge.

Rei frowned at the boy's quick movement. "Don't insult the Commander."

"I'll say what I want when it comes to him. He abandoned me when I was young. He doesn't care at all about us."

The First turned back around to face forward.

They continued in tense silence for a while.

* * *

Two hearts beating in tandem in identical rooms. Shinji and Rei sat in the Entry Plugs of their respective Evangelion units, both sighing in relief; one audibly, the other silently. The most dangerous moment had passed, Rei had successfully activated her Evangelion.

"Good job Rei! Your synch ratio is slightly lower than before the accident, but that's to be expected," Ritsuko said over the intercom, "try moving around a little bit. Shinji, stay on hold for now, I don't think there will be anything wrong with Unit-00 but it's better safe than sorry."

The Third Pilot nodded in his Evangelion unit, bored out of his mind and hoping for an end to the test.

Rei did as she was told and tested out the movement in Unit-00. It was stiff, less responsive than she was used to, but she was certain that she could improve to adequate fighting capability with time.

A faint voice called over the intercom, it wasn't Dr. Akagi, but one of the three computer technicians on the bridge.

"Um… Akagi-senpai? There's something you should see here," Maya Ibuki was a young woman, only 24 years old; 3 years out of her undergraduate studies at the University of Hokkaido, Japan's top university following Second Impact, and she was working at Nerv. "One of our scans are reporting a blue blood pattern…"

Oh fuck. Everyone in hearing distance, plugged into the communications system, hell, everyone in Tokyo-3 shivered; even if they had no way of knowing what was going on.

"We only have 1 Evangelion unit available right now… This timing is just perfect!" A man with long hair, wearing the standard Nerv technicians uniform had a nasty, sarcastic smile on his face.

"Captain Katsuragi, Dr. Akagi, what should I do?" Shinji asked over the intercom. Usually he was fairly informal with the Captain, but the Spartan had emphasized adherence to the chain of command and showing proper respect in professional situations and Shinji had learned fairly quickly.

As the Commander was in meeting, Misato had the deck. "We're going to send you up as soon as we have MAGI confirmation of the Angel. Standby and prepare for deployment." The purple haired woman turned her head towards Ritsuko as if to ask what to do with Rei.

"Right. Rei, Unit-00 still isn't stable enough to be deployed and I'm not too sure we should be continuing the test if Unit-01 isn't on standby for a worst case scenario. Get ready to eject."

Both pilots nodded, accepting their orders.

* * *

"Okay Shinji, we have visual and MAGI confirmation that the pyramid looking thing up there is in fact Angel number 5. Codename: Ramiel." Shinji heard Misato say over the intercom.

"Misato, I think it's called an octahedron, not a pyramid." One of the displays in the Plug lit up and showed Shinji a

"Not the time Shinji." It was refreshing though, in private channels Shinji and Misato could be more informal, ever since John had started training Shinji, even teaching him things not related to fighting now; the Evangelion Pilot had turned over a new leaf. He was helpful as ever, but was more confident, not the biggest feat considering how he had acted before the change, but it was a start. "The Angel has the strongest A.T. field we've ever seen so far, so we won't bother sending you up there with a Pallet rifle. You're going to have to try and tear it apart barehanded."

Shinji remained impassive, for all the emphasis that Nerv placed on experimental weapons and the like, Angel fights always ended up with him fighting the monster hand to hand.

"Understood." Shinji commandeered his mecha to the launch platform, once secured, a countdown appeared on the display of the Plug. Ten seconds til zero. There was something about this situation that didn't seem right to the pilot. He had the lead-weight feeling that someone somewhere had fucked up big time.

The computer called out zero hour and the Evangelion shot to the surface, propelled by magnets. A purple bullet being fired out of the ground, at the Angel.

Inside the plug, Shinji lay vertical, pressed against his seat by the added gravitational force from moving so quickly. Five seconds into his ascent he heard the panicked cries of the technician, Aoba Hyuga.

"We're detecting a huge amount of energy building up in the Angel!"

Something terrible came and there was nothing that could be done. Ramiel fired with all the wrath of God. Thunder, the Angel was named for. Thunder and holy wrath, divine punishment.

Screaming came from the pilot, nerves doused in battery acid as the LCL around him boiled to incredibly temperatures. The pressure in the Plug increased as liquid LCL made the transition into vapor, expanding in volume a hundredfold. Shinji felt it all, pulped in from all sides by the writhing, fire hot LCL squeezing, bearing down on him.

"Eject! Eject! Eject!"

Mission failure.

* * *

Shinji woke up to another hospital ceiling. It looked exactly the same as the one he had stayed under during his previous hospitalization but instinct told him that it was a different ward he was stationed in. The injured boy swiveled his head with surprising ease considering the tight bandaging that surrounded his whole body including his neck and caught a glimpse of blue before finally he could turn no more.

"Hi Rei, what brings you here?" Asked Shinji. It wasn't like he and the First Child were on great terms. She had after all tried to hit him the last time they had talked.

If Rei felt any resentment or anger from the conversation on the elevator, she didn't show it. "I've been ordered to brief you on the mission to destroy the Fifth Angel; codenamed: Operation Yashima." The bluenette stared at Shinji, eyes red, gaze steady, bored almost. "Both Unit-00 and Unit-01 are expected to be repaired enough for usage by midnight tonight. At 12:15 AM, we will engage the Fifth Angel using an experimental particle rifle developed by the JSSDF."

"Why hasn't the city been destroyed already? Isn't the Angel still attacking?"

Rei nodded almost imperceptibly. "Shortly following your failed attack, the Angel hovered over Tokyo-3 and deployed a drill-like organ that is currently burrowing through the defensive layers of the Geo Front as we speak."

Shinji shivered. A time constraint. "How long until it breaks through completely?"

"The last estimate I am aware of gave the defenses 10 hours to hold."

Both pilots looked to the clock on the wall. It was 6 in the evening.

"When exactly did you hear this estimate?"

A pause. "Around an hour after you sortied with the Angel. Four in the afternoon."

That gave them around 8 hours. Eight hours to heal and prepare.

Shinji ran a hand through his head. "Well, I guess I can make a miracle happen."

* * *

"What do you think about the plan?" Asked Misato. It was night time now, only around an hour until the operation was to commence. She knew that Shinji's burns had healed slightly thanks to the efforts of the doctors.

"I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I wasn't a little bit scared… It just seems too convenient that all we have to do is shoot the Angel from far away. I _know_ something's going to go wrong." Shinji shrugged in his jacket, trying to sooth his itching back. His newly regrown skin was immensely sensitive to the slightest of touches.

Rei decided to speak up. "Pilot Ikari, that line of thinking is counter productive. The Captain and Commander have jointly decided that Operation Yashima is the scenario with the highest chance of success."

Shinji was surprised. "Never pegged you to be the optimist type Rei." The type of serious yet playful banter before a fight never really calmed Shinji down much, but it took his mind off of things.

"Oh yeah, Misato, do you know where John is?"

The pretty captain scratched her head in thought. "Let's see… Ah yes! He was overseeing the construction of the particle rifle, you'll probably see him once you beat the Angel."

"Okay then, I was just hoping for some last minute shooting tips. We should get to the Eva, Rei."

The First Child nodded silently and let the way to the holding cages, only a short walk away. Misato called after them, "Good luck kids! I'll see you two later!"

The pilots were alone now, traversing the green hallways. They would pilot the Evangelion into the Geofront and through a series of tunnels designed expressly to allow the Evangelion to exit Nerv Headquarters in case the surface was too dangerous. Once in the tunnels, they would detach their power cables and pilot the Eva underground to the mountainside several miles away. From there they would be re-outfitted power cables and hopefully get a clear shot at the Angel.

"Ayanami?" Shinji asked his companion, "why do you pilot the Evangelion?" It was a personal question, but considering that both teenagers were pilots, it was a relevant one to ask.

Without stopping her brisk pace Rei responded, "I pilot because I have nothing else. Piloting Evangelion allows me to bond to people in ways that are otherwise impossible for me." She thought of the Commander.

Shinji frowned and looked down, inadvertently noticing the brown case that the First Child held onto like a lifeline. "Are you sure that's it? I don't want to hurt your feelings or anything, but you have those glasses with you. They're my father's right? Is he why you pilot Eva?"

There came a hitching breath from Ayanami as she stopped in the middle of the hallway, almost causing Shinji to walk into her. "It's as you said earlier Pilot Ikari. I am afraid for my safety, for my life. But because the Commander has ordered me to pilot, I will pilot."

A month ago Shinji would have advised Rei to stop piloting if loyalty to the Commander was the only thing keeping her in the machine that had taken so much, but he understood a little better now. ' _Everyone has different reasons for doing anything I guess. Can't judge Rei for any reasons she can come up with.'_

The two continued their walk.

"Why do you continue to pilot the Evangelion, Pilot Ikari?" Rei asked, taking Shinji by surprise.

He scratched his head and made longer strides to walk directly next to the bluenette. "It's complicated. I actually hate piloting the Eva, but what you said about bonding with people is right. When you or I get into those robots and fight the Angels, we're connecting with everyone in Tokyo-3, everyone in the world on a really basic level, aren't we? I mean, we're keeping them alive after all."

Rei nodded. They had arrived. The green metal gate slide open with a snake-hiss and Shinji and Rei went to their respective locker rooms.

"Ayanami."

"Yes, Pilot Ikari?"

The two teenagers spoke to each other over the partition that had been put in to protect their privacy.

"We didn't really get off on the right foot, or how ever that saying goes, but we're both pilots. Could we get along?"

Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, Rei smiled.

"Of course."

Zero hour had come.

* * *

Shinji pulled the manual ejection and crawled out of his machine with a deftness he wouldn't have been able to emulate a month before. The Angel was dead and forgotten, a husk of itself, and Rei was potentially injured. About 20 feet off the ground, dangling from a ledge created by Unit-01's armor, Shinji took a huge gulp and let go, miraculously landing correctly as to not break a bone.

His legs ached however with his rather lengthy fall, knees creaking he ran to the downed Unit-00's Entry Plug, carefully avoiding the cooling sludge that splattered the landscape when Ramiel's laser had boiled away at the space shuttle shield they had used to buy time.

' _Shit shit shit, please be okay!'_ Frantic thoughts and worst case scenarios ran through Shinji's head. What good was defeating the Angel if the one person who truly understood life as a Pilot was no longer around?

The Entry Plug was still hot. Steam flew upwards, whipped faster and faster away by the wind currents. The Plug Suit did cover his hands, but the flimsy material would provide no protection from the hot metal helicopter-twist hatch. In fact, the Plug Suit might even _melt_ to his hands; Shinji wasn't too familiar with the materials chemistry that went behind the creation of the Suits, but he wasn't thinking of that at the moment.

He braced himself and grabbed the handles of the Entry Plug.

' _God, why don't they give us MJOLNIR like they gave John?'_ Certainly the armor would have made this job effortless. Shinji ignored the pain as best he could, smiling bitterly at his stupid burst of courage.

His hands felt like they were burning. They were. But finally, after what seemed to be minutes of terrible struggle, the hatch gave way and a flood of hot LCL flooded the ground at Shinji's feet.

The dark of evening and shadows cast by the Entry Plug made it difficult to see, but Shinji somehow knew that Rei was okay.

He crouched and entered the Plug, making his way to unbuckled Rei from her chair and take her to medical care. Rei raised her head swiftly, surprising the Third Child.

"I'm okay Pilot Ikari."

"I'm glad…" Shinji's voice broke in relief.

* * *

 _Seele Meeting, during initial contact with the Fifth Angel_

"Shouldn't you be supervising the sortie, Commander?" Asked Pillar 6.

Gendo remained impassive at the jibe implying that he was neglecting his duties. "Captain Katsuragi has proven herself quite capable in the past. I trust in her completely."

"And the Third Child? I know there must be some fatherly pride at your son's successes, but to have total faith in a mere boy?" Pillar 1 said quite cruelly, knowing of the severed relationship between father and son.

The Commander avoided the question, there was no real way to answer it without coming off as weak. "I believe we have gathered here for other reasons, gentlemen. Issues pertaining to the construction of _Evangelion-S_?"

Pillar 2's sigh came through as static. "It's simply not possible. The metaphysics behind the construction of an Evangelion unit apparently requires a blood bond between the two souls. Halsey is _not_ S-117's birth parent."

"What of his birth mother? I do not have access to such files, but surely Seele does?"

Seele 3 responded: "Sierra-117 effectively has no birth mother. Being taken away at such a young age means that he didn't have time to make any meaningful connections with his birth parents. You understand a lack of meaningful connections, don't you Ikari?"

If the constant taunting bothered the Nerv Commander, he didn't let it show. "And yet you—"

"Yes, yes we did. Foolish mistake on our part, nothing of consequence however. Merely a matter of Seele 4's presumptuousness."

Gendo pressed his attack. "Halsey was the greatest mind of her generation. Her death is a tragedy for mankind, has she died for nothing?"

Seele 4 seemed angry. "I'll have you all know that I was _assured_ that Halsey's soul would be compatible with the _Evangelion-S._ It is no fault of mine if our postulations were not accurate." A pause. "The project is not a total loss however."

The Pillars and Gendo waited with bated breath.

"Her soul; more specifically, her brain in conjunction with her soul, will allow us to create something of comparable value with an Evangelion unit."

Comparable with an Evangelion? Impossible, they were man's greatest weapon. Gendo dismissed any and all hopes for Seele 4's claims. It was quite obvious that the man was attempting damage control for his foolhardy act of killing Halsey before the time was ripe.

"Do you gentlemen know of artificial intelligence?" Seele 4 could hardly see his counterparts and continued without waiting for response. "While investigating the utility of a soul outside of placement in either an Evangelion unit or in Instrumentality; my researchers made a breakthrough in the field. Mapping out the human brain through closed circuit neural mapping allows for a soul to be _implanted_ into an artificial intelligence."

"Are you saying—"

"Yes I am. Gentlemen, we have the first self-learning, self-correcting, _strong_ A.I.!"

Gendo didn't understand quite what this meant for Seele and Nerv. "An impressive accomplishment for sure, but it will not assist us in combating the Angels or bringing along Instrumentality. On top of that, the Spartan _will_ find out about Halsey's death. Having an unpredictable super-soldier is dangerous to the scenario."

"You don't quite understand Ikari. The dossier that Nerv was given did not give the full scope of the Spartan's augmentations."

"What of the augmentations?"

"The final surgery done to the Spartans, the one that killed the majority of the soldiers, was the

insertion of a biomechanical membranous interface surrounding the brain. An A.I. can be _uploaded_ to the Spartan's mind."

Gendo snorted. "I can hardly believe that Sierra-117 will allow that to happen. He is very suspicious of any surgery attempts nowadays."

"There's no surgery required. The A.I. simply needs to be connected to the MJOLNIR suit and the existing neural bridges between suit and wearer will allow the A.I. to communicate directly with the Spartan. Being molded of Halsey's brain and soul also means that the Spartan is likely to respond well, become more stable."

Damn. The scenario had changed again. A mind such as Halsey's, a woman with an I.Q. of over 190, given the computing power of the Magi and an active personality to match. This was a disaster waiting to happen. For Seele at least.

"The A.I. has been uploaded to a solid state hyperchip and is being sent along with Unit-02 and the sample of Adam that you requested. Agent Kaji will bring them to you directly."

' _Yes, sir.'_ Gendo said to himself, plotting once more.

* * *

"That's the Third Child? You know Kaji, he really isn't much. You made him out to be some sort of hero when he's actually a wimp!"

Shinji frowned at that last comment. He was actually quite tall for his age now. And if the amount of female attention he was getting at school was any indication, maybe even quite attractive.

The man next to the redhead grunted idly, eyes roaming from Misato to Shinji to John back to Misato again. "You haven't changed a bit _Katsuragi_." He smiled and shook his ponytailed head.

"I still can't believe they sent you, honestly, why would they give responsibility to the most _irresponsible_ asshole alive?" Misato moaned and cradled her head in mock agony.

The red haired girl seemed particularly interested. "Stop trashing Kaji! He's the greatest man alive!"

"Calm down Asuka," Kaji patted the girl's head good naturedly and motioned to the trio in front of them. "The title of greatest man alive goes to him over there. He's the real hero." He pointed directly at the hulking green figure who had remained silent all this time. Kaji knew who was inside the suit. Remembered him from all those years ago, he remembered the unrepentant violence and mechanical brutality. But he had also uncovered that the attack on the newly made Spartan in 2009 was ordered by the higher ups… He didn't really have any ill-will towards Sierra-117, just a little apprehension. Mostly Kaji was apprehensive about Asuka finding out about her past interactions with the Spartan already. He knew that she still had nightmares about that day sometimes… That's why it was so important to act normally he guessed, or as normally one could act when dealing with the Spartan.

"Oh!" Asuka's eyes lit up in realization, "you're the Spartan!" She walked closer to the Master Chief and extended a hand in greeting. "I've heard so much about you!" Asuka didn't know who exactly was under the suit, but the Spartan was her hero. The paragon of professionalism and talent. The Spartan was _number one._ Asuka had tried her damndest to emulate that level of excellence in her daily life.

It was like talking to a brick wall.

Misato pulled Asuka away from the Spartan. "Okay, you can relax anytime now, John. Jeez… We should all introduce ourselves, for the sake of Shinji here I guess."

"Ryoji, Kaji, I'm a special agent. Nice to meet you." Shinji bowed to his elder as was customary in Japan.

"I'm Ikari, Shinji, Third Child and pilot of Evangelion Unit-01."

Asuka huffed. "Asuka. Langley. Soryu. Remember the name, Third Child," she paused, thinking about something additional to say, "oh yeah. I'm better than you."

Shinji opened his mouth to argue that she had no possible way of knowing that but was stopped when Misato put a calming hand on his shoulder.

"Katsuragi, Misato; everyone here knows me anyways." She turned to John, looking expectantly.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" Asuka looked hopeful. Maybe he was just shy?

John said nothing. He remembered who the little girl was. Those were not good memories.

 **AN: Another chapter done! Asuka's here now! The trip to the ship and everything will be covered in the next chapter. Expect the Angel fight as well!**

 **What do you guys think about the Halsey plot going on right now? You guys want to see any scenes/interactions/etc in specific? Put some suggestions in your reviews maybe.**


	7. Chapter 7: God's gonna cut you down

**Chapter 7: God's gonna cut you down**

 **Teaser: Asuka and Shinji make some small talk. Some spooky dreams. John and Kaji have an important talk. Angel 7 arrives. Enter Cortana.**

" **All bright kids are depraved." - Vladimir Nabokov**

 **AN: I don't really feel like writing Shinji and Asuka's meeting in detail tbh, so I won't be writing Shinji's trip to the Pacific fleet after all. Let's assume that it went down as described last chapter. And tbh, I know nothing about cello so Shinji will be a piano player. Not relevant right now.**

It was night now, the adults, Kaji and Misato had decided to turn in and went to their respective rooms after trading insults. But Asuka and Shinji were still up, sitting together on the deck of the supercarrier, staring at the blue-black sky studded with glinting snowflake-stars hung on high.

Maybe it could have been romantic. The stars above, white and cruel, around them the sea, pulsing with dark life. No one else was on the deck, no one to watch or hear anything; as if Rapture had come and the two pilots were the only ones left behind. Without witnesses, conversation between the two wouldn't exist outside of this specific moment. The two pilots could speak with the candidness born of having no alternative.

"I'm only out here 'cause there isn't anything much to do on this boat." Asuka was still in her yellow dress, legs stretched languidly out in front of her, the delicate skin visible in the darkness. It was quite cold at night, and the soft breeze made the girl shiver. Next to her a fighter jet, dormant metal for now. Shinji sat propped against the landing prop and wheel, yawning.

"How long have you been sailing so far?" The boy sounded disinterested, something in his voice was artificial, manufactured even; as if he was trying his hardest to keep distance.

"Maybe like a week, we took a train from Germany through Russia. They wanted me to stay with the Eva at all times."

Shinji nodded, understanding the justified paranoia of the higher ups. Angel attacks could happen at any time… "Say, Asuka?"

"What is it, baka?" The girl didn't even turn her head. She had her arms behind her, holding her weight so that she could tilt her head toward the heavens. Her jawline made for an interesting sight in the blue brightness of dusk.

A dull thump of head hitting thick rubber of a tire. Shinji moaned in irritation at what seemed to be his new nickname. "Do you mind not calling me that? I did introduce myself after all."

Red hair swished as Asuka turned her head. "Okay then Third Child, I'll call you _baka-hentai_ instead. 'Kay?"

"What grounds do you even have to think I'm a pervert?" Shinji asked, annoyed.

She stood abruptly, yellow fabric swirling around her. "All boys are perverts."

Shinji scoffed, "you have a shitty attitude. It's kind of a waste if you ask me."

The fuck? "A waste of what?" The Second Child walked toward the still sitting boy, menacingly, threateningly. If Shinji felt he was in danger, he suppressed it well, not flinching at the slapping sound of Asuka's shoes against the metal deck.

"You're pretty," his voice was deadpan, "but you're really mean. Like, I couldn't even imagine dating you." Behind the cover of the tire, Shinji managed to hide his shaking. Telling painful truths was not something that came easily to the adolescent pilot.

The sound of walking stopped. "You think I'm pretty?" Asuka blushed but it was unnoticeable in the minimal lighting.

An audible stutter entered Shinji's voice. "Y-yeah, I do," there was an awkward pause.

Asuka hid her happiness behind a veneer of scorn. "This is what I mean when I say all boys are perverts. Can't you look past a girl's looks and appreciate them for who they are?" She made the corny phrase sound angry and continued to walk toward Shinji who was still underneath the fighter jet.

"I'm sorry, I was just trying to be nice." Shinji was growing emotionally tired and began to adopt his normal self-effacing persona; acting cool and collected was too difficult to maintain, especially when speaking with one as intelligent and blindingly pretty as Asuka.

She sat across from him now, legs pulled close, nestled into the tire opposite Shinji's. "So," she said trying to change the topic to something less awkward, "what's it like piloting _for real_?"

"You mean against Angels?"

Red hair nodded, the dark of night made everything look purple.

Shinji thought for a moment before continuing. "It's hard. Painful, really painful." It was cathartic to be telling this to someone who understood. His horror stories about piloting had no weight with people like Haruhi who had no idea, could never have an idea, about what real _pain_ was. He undid the bottom two buttons of his white shirt and pointed to a spot on his stomach. "The second Angel I fought stabbed the Eva through here. I was only at 50% synch and I can still remember how much it hurt."

Bewildered, Asuka pressed him for details. "What was the fight like?" She hadn't had the opportunity, nor will to watch any of the recordings of the previous Evangelion sorties, citing that the other pilots ' _were amateurs'_ compared to her.

Shinji looked down at his hands, remembering the hot whips of purple-white plasma that had scorched the Eva's hands down to enormous metacarpals.

"Sorry… I'd rather not talk about it. Hopefully it never happens again." But it would. It would happen again and again, each time more perverse, more painful than the last. A snake eating it's tail.

"Can I ask you a question?" Shinji looked up from his phantom pain ridden hands at the redhead in front of him.

Her arms, slender, stretched to the sides. "Make it quick. I don't have much patience for stupid questions."

"It won't be stupid. I promise."

Asuka nodded for him to continue. The wake of the moving supercarrier created a soothing sound, as if every beach in the world had been stacked atop of each other, tide coming in and out.

"Why do you want to be a Pilot?" Shinji wasn't too clear of his own motivations. Rei had given him a rather robotic answer. It was a good thing to know the motivations of his fellow pilots.

"That's a long story. You sure you want to hear the whole thing?"

"Yeah." Shinji stared attentively, edging closer to the redhead. Asuka put her legs together and to the side, not risking giving the boy a peek.

"... Nah, I'm not gonna tell you."

He almost face faulted. "Why not?"

Asuka's finger came to tap on her cheek. "Well, there's a couple reasons. One being that it's a long story, it's too late to start it. Two being that I don't trust you yet. And finally," she paused for dramatic effect, "it's private. That's all you need to know."

The boy sighed. "I guess you're right about it being late." He got up and offered a hand to Asuka, who batted it away.

"I don't want your help."

How. Fucking. Rude. Shinji took deep breaths to calm down. Still, he would remember this moment. The first conversation of many.

* * *

Asuka didn't respond to Shinji's wave goodbye as they turned into different corridors. The Second Child walked aimlessly around the hallways. Something in her stomach didn't sit right, she didn't want to sleep just yet.

' _I could go see Kaji.'_ Not likely. It was half past eleven and Kaji had made it quite clear that she wasn't to come to him late at night now that she was older. She sighed in frustration. ' _Why can't he…'_

The clunk of metal on metal came from around the hallway. The sound was familiar, but unplaceable.

"Who's there?" She called out, receiving no answer. It was probably one of the crew making some late night rounds she reasoned.

Half right, the source of the clunking sound wasn't exactly a member of the crew of the _U.N.N.S Shylock_. But it was someone Asuka had met before.

"It's you!" She pointed a finger at the passerby and started a light trot toward the Master Chief, who had been wandering the ship, unable to sleep, unwilling to succumb to chemical assistance just yet. Nightmares were a terrible thing. "I've been meaning to talk to you!" Asuka smiled brightly and put her hands behind her back as charmingly as possible.

"About what?" The Spartan stopped, his path blocked by the comparatively diminutive redhead. In his hand he held a paper bag. His voice was gruff, almost annoyed.

She grabbed his free hand, tugging him off down the hallway. "Come on! We can get a coffee or something at the cafeteria. We can talk there." Pull as she might, John didn't even budge. "Come on!" Her face turned backwards, pouting at the soldier, not used to being brushed aside so brusquely.

The orange visor shook from side to side, slowly, declining the invitation. "It's late."

"I'm not tired, and you're walking around anyways. What's so important you can't spare a second to talk with me?" She tried guilting the Spartan into talking to her. Ineffective.

"I need to speak with the Third Child." John walked off, Asuka trailing not too far behind.

"Why him? There's nothing he can give you that I can't!" The awful feeling of inferiority, of being in second place metastasized. Asuka had felt it the moment she heard about the Third's impressive performances in the Eva, but now, being snubbed in favor of the Third made it explode. "I'm better than him, I've been training all my life to be a pilot, _he_ just got it 'cause his father works at Nerv!"

The Spartan's head turned ever so slightly, the glare could be felt even through the opaque visor of the helmet. "Go to bed Second Children."

Asuka screamed and ran off to her room, tired of being looked down upon, tired of feeling subpar, disappointed that her expectations of the Spartan not be met.

* * *

Eventually Shinji fell asleep and dreamt of a ring of fire.

He was falling at first. The world was black. No, not black. Assigning a color to his surroundings implied that there was _something_ around him to have a color. The blackness was simply the Absence. A lack of space, matter, energy; only in dreams was this possible. What impossibilities could occur here?

Shinji couldn't see it happen but he somehow knew of it's occurrence. A broken glass cup put itself back together, spontaneously, the molecules making up the scattered razor shards of glass simply willing themselves into perfect ordered space. Hadn't he learned that entropy was supposed to increase?

That was true in the real world. Shinji wasn't exactly a wizard of physics, in fact, physics was his weakest subject. But he didn't need any fancy thermodynamic proofs in order to know that entropy, that disorder, grew and grew in a maddening funeral procession. Boots of the mourners clomping against the ground in time with whatever threnody was being played.

Life was proof enough of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as valid as any mathematical model or chemical system; Shinji's life seemed as if it were written specifically to ape the simple statement: entropy increases. Disorder increased.

He thought back to what he knew of his birth. The sixth day of the sixth month, in the year 2001. Born to Yui and Gendo Ikari, what should have been a stable family. The universe kept expanding, more space for molecules to move and collide and interact, entropy kept increasing. His mother then died in a tragic accident, so early on that all Shinji could remember of her was the softness of her voice. Then, of course, his _father_ had left him, called the teenager to Tokyo-3 after a decade or so of minimal contact, and pigeon-holed him into fighting _Angels_. Life got crazier and crazier.

Once again the darkness. The emptiness. Walls; top, sides, bottom rushing away from Shinji, expanding omnidirectionally, through time, through space, expanding the borders of the dream so far that ten thousand universalities could have fit into a single corner.

Shinji kept falling, almost but not quite keeping up with the expanding floor; or was it ceiling or side? He didn't know which way gravity was acting. Usually it was down, but that didn't mean anything here. It didn't mean anything out of his dreams either. His perception of down was up for the people living on the other side of the world wasn't it?

It didn't matter which direction Shinji was falling because he was going to die. There was a light in front of him. Not the cliched light at the end of the tunnel, but more like a floating, ghostly campfire. It looked like a campfire, but after several eternities of falling in an unknown direction, the campfire blossomed, a tight virgin's sphincter of a fire, then a ring; a ring of fire.

He fell into the burning ring of fire, hitting the ground, ceiling, wall, whatever surface there was hard. It seemed like there really was something around him, something colored so deeply black that it was indistinguishable from the dark, cold depths of the ego. Around him were flames, burning coldly, nothing to burn yet still raging on. The flames licked higher and Shinji felt smaller; or maybe he shrunk and the flames stayed the same size. It didn't really matter.

The fires hissed evilly. Those orange lights showed him his past, his present, his future in flicking sepia red frames. He would have screamed but he was familiar with everything he saw. His past was pain, his present pain, and of course his future would be pain. Deductive reasoning and all. Life was pain but you got used to it. Or maybe he'd never get used to it, after all, the pain of his father's abandonment hurt even to this day.

The flames around him tightened. Warm, but not hot. Burning his flesh, but not hurting him. A strange fire, one only possible in dreams. The redness coalesced into shapes, outlines of human bodies, before being extinguished by a great gust of wind that Shinji could not feel. There was ash left behind, grey-black carbon sprinkled with white bone fragments, burst from the inside by boiling marrow turned to gas. The grey shapes left behind were mostly legible, written out in kanji, names.

Katsuragi, Misato. Ayanami, Rei. John… no last name. Kaji, Ryoji. Soryu, Asuka Langley. He stared at the last name the longest. Asuka, the Second Child. Hair: red. Height: Shinji didn't know for certain, but maybe an inch or two shorter than he was. Weight: better not even _think_ about that. Eyes: blue, brighter than his own.

' _She's so pretty.'_

* * *

The four of them; Asuka, Shinji, Misato, and Kaji had breakfast together. Almost like a family. It was quite terrible. Everything on the boat was fake. Eggs, made of powder. Coffee, instant. Milk, just add water! It wasn't like yesterday where Misato had avoided the rest of them, embarrassed at her reunion with her ex. She seemed angrier, rather, her anger was more obvious. Her barbs were sharp. The only issue Shinji had with it was that it wasn't directed very well. A gun being shot by a blind man. He hid himself behind one of the books John had brought him last night.

"Pass the syrup Shinji." He noted that she looked better than she did most mornings, even without her morning can of beer. Her hair was tied back, making her look younger and more severe. Kaji couldn't keep his eyes off of her.

"Hey Shinji," Kaji said out the side of his mouth, not turning his head from Misato, "you live with Katsuragi right?"

"I do." Shinji looked up from his plate of fake eggs and over cooked bacon.

"Is she still wild in bed? I remember what she used to do during—"

Asuka and Misato both shrieked.

"How could you— How could you even think about something like that?" Misato lost her cool, face red, spit flying from her mouth and she yelled. "He's 14 year old boy!"

Asuka stared daggers at Misato, baring her teeth. "Kaji are you saying that you _slept_ with this hussy?" Her voice pitched itself in all directions before she turned on Shinji. "And _you_ , little boy! I _knew_ you were a pervert! Sleeping with your guardian, how scandalous!" Her fork was pointed dangerously in front of Shinji's face, almost touching the cover of Shinji's book.

"It's not like that—" but before Shinji could finish he was interrupted.

"Of _course_ it's not like that! I'm not a pedophile!" Misato hit her hand against the table, sending toast flying. She stormed off after giving Kaji a terrible look.

Kaji rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Well kids, looks like I got to go calm Misato down… It was just a joke…" The secret agent walked off, lighting a cigarette despite the signs forbidding it. And all at once, the two Children were left alone. Strange expressions on their faces, they sat in silence among the plates of food growing stale. Asuka looked upset, lips wet and plump with gloss, eyes carefully outlined in black. She blinked hard to keep tears from spilling and sat down in her chair.

She looked down at her lap, red polka-dotted skirt balled up in her hands, hair hiding her face from the world. "Hey Shinji?" False cheer. Fake, just like the food on the table. Smile and you're invincible. Show no weakness.

"Yes, Asuka?" He measured his tone well. Calm and placating, aware of the situation, sensitive. He already knew how angry the half-German girl could get. Trying to keep a sense of normalcy he bit on a piece of bacon, so overcooked that it felt like chewing glass.

Asuka lifted her head slowly, giving herself as much time possible to master her expression. ' _Smile big, don't show that you're sad.'_ She told herself this, but it was hard. So hard not to frown, not to cry. The cold knives of inferiority, of resentment toward Kaji, toward Misato. God, how she hated being _less_ than someone. Being ignored by Kaji in favor of another woman. Her mouth tasted like heartbreak instead of the strange aftertaste of concentrated, frozen orange juice.

Bitter.

"You told me yesterday that you thought I was pretty?"

How to respond? Shinji knew the expression on Asuka's face all too well. The crushing feeling of not being good enough, that something basic and unchangeable was wrong with yourself. The feeling, no, _knowledge_ that no matter how hard you tried, your dreams would always be far, far away. The worst part was being unable to give it up. No matter how hard it hurt to love, to want the thing, person; unreachable meant just that. For Shinji it was his father. For Asuka it was the affection of a man named Ryoji Kaji. Everyone has an impossible dream, a small, mad hope they can't help but nurse.

"I did say that." He put down his book, a torn corner of a napkin folded between the pages to mark his spot. He didn't know what to feel or what he wanted to feel. Should he sympathize? His inability to be loved by his father was incredibly similar to Asuka's unrequited romance with her guardian… But did he want to be sympathetic, was perhaps a better question. Sympathy requires emotional nakedness, it comes through a bond of trust and mutual acceptance. It was not possible.

"Don't laugh at me." Her command held surprising vehemence.

"I promise not to." A promise given with little recalcitrance.

"I'm not upset you know. Just a little annoyed," she began with a shuddering sigh and her voice hitched, "I ask for so _little_ from him. But he won't even give me that much. It's like—"

"Have you ever been somewhere really cold?"

Asuka nodded, confused at the seemingly unrelated tangent. "Where are you going with this?"

"It's like when you see a homeless person on the street during winter. They're just sitting there, maybe with a little cup in their hands, begging for money. But you just walk past them, not saying a single thing. You don't do this because you're a jerk, but because you don't want to get your wallet out." Shinji's eyes were fixed on a blank pendentive made by the touching of three different plates, he seemed absolutely focused.

Asuka didn't know what to say. The Third Child was absolutely right. She smiled sincerely now, but it was one of sadness. The difference between soft resignation and an indignant screech. "Didn't know a baka like you could be so deep."

They sat in silence for a while. Before leaving, going separate ways. Two ships headed to different ports, yet with the same destination. All they wanted to be was loved.

* * *

"Tell me about the Master Chief, baka."

Lunch had been uneventful, everyone quiet, wise enough not to poke fun at an irate Misato. Asuka had tried to hang around with Kaji, but the man had cited _work_ and was too busy to be spending any time with his charge. And so, Asuka was left behind, alone, with Shinji. The hated Third Child. Still, it wasn't as if she had other options.

"What do you want to know about him?"

They were sitting alone in a random lounge room. Shinji sounded dull, too engrossed in his book to be care about much else.

"Uh, why he's such an asshole for starters. I tried talking to him yesterday but he just ignored me."

"Don't take it personally, he's like that to everyone."

Asuka sighed in relief, brushing her red hair from her forehead. "Man, I thought he just hated me."

"It's never like that with John. He's too… He doesn't seem to care about anything enough to hate it."

She recognized the name, it had been said in passing during their introduction. "So John's his name? Seems kind of dull if you ask me… Say, why are _you_ on a first name basis with him?"

Shinji put down his book, unable to focus on it while talking to Asuka at the same time. "He doesn't really have a last name," he paused, thinking of a better way to phrase his thoughts, "no… Everyone has a last name. He's just never told me his. I don't think that it's he's not _allowed_ to tell me, just that he doesn't want to." ' _Or that he doesn't know.'_

"Guess that isn't too weird," Asuka tapped on her chin in thought, "he's not Japanese is he? Most people call each other by their first names in the West."

"Yeah, I think he's American or something. He doesn't really talk about that sort of stuff."

"So you've seen him without his helmet? What's he look like?" She pictured in her mind, a handsome man in his mid twenties…

The Third Child thought for a while. John. The first things that came to mind… Scars, long scars, massive ropes of damaged tissue desperately holding his skin together. Eyes, dead like Ayanami's. No, that wasn't accurate. The First Child had eyes that seemed never to have lived in the first place. Like they were made of glass. Something had killed John's eyes, no longer did they see, they only stared.

"He's pale… Really pale, like you wouldn't understand. I guess if I was a girl, I'd call him 'handsome', in a plain sort of way. He's really young too. A couple years older than us."

"Really?" Asuka was surprised, "how much older than us?"

"He's 17, haven't you read the files on the Spartans? A lot of it has been declassified."

She shook her head disapprovingly, clicking her tongue in reproach. "Oh you stupid, stupid boy. _Declassified_ doesn't mean accessible. The files are reserved for the medical community in specific, you know, to share information about the surgeries and stuff."

Strange. Shinji had been given a copy of the reports by Misato.

"I have a copy back in Tokyo-3 if you want."

She nodded her head. "Least you're good for something. Think he's looking for a girlfriend?"

Shinji only felt the slightest bit of jealousy. "He's not the type."

Scandal. "You mean he's gay?"

"What! No!" Shinji bobbed his head in the negative, "you'll understand if you get to know him better. He's pretty anti-social."

Asuka made a sound between disappointment and resignation. "What a shame… But Kaji is the only one for me after all. I'm saving myself for when he marries me you know."

' _Delusional, wasn't she just crying about how she couldn't get him to look at her that way just yesterday?'_

"Right…" Oh how he wished to just get back to his book. The conversation was going places he didn't really want to go to.

The Second didn't seem ready to drop it. "So how about you Third? Little boy like you have a special someone?"

What a depressing topic. "Not really. There's this one girl at school who's been talking to me… But I can't tell if she actually likes me or if it's because I'm a pilot. ' _Hero of Tokyo-3'_ she calls me." Both Children laughed. "I'm pretty sure that it's because I'm a pilot. No one really used to talk to me before they found out about Eva."

There it was. Evangelion. Why the two pilots were there on that ship in the first place.

"Hey! I know what we can do instead of sitting here! I'll go show you my Unit-02." The girl grabbed Shinji's hand, pulling him away from the warmth of the couch and into the empty corridor.

* * *

The engine room. A place lit with red lights, lined in lead in case the fusion reactor of the supercarrier be compromised. A private place, a place of quiet save for the hum of engines and turbines, cut away from the rest of the world. A hundred feet below the ocean. Strange to think about it like that. A pocket of dryness surrounded by water. A pocket of privacy in a life where everything is known, laid bare for the world to see.

"I've been wanting to talk to you." Kaji leaned against the wall, shadow of a pipe covering his face. The ember of a cigarette in stark contrast with the darkness his spot.

"You're the U.N. Special Inspector. You have access to all the information on me." The Spartan, shrouded a corona of red. A demon.

"I know that. But this isn't about Sierra-117, it's about _you_ , John Spengler."

"Sierra-117 and John Spengler are one and the same." The first time John had used his last name in years.

The only sign of Kaji shaking his head was the erratic movement of the cigarette flame. "You know it's not the same." He had been hoping to unnerve the Spartan by using the surname. It had taken much work to uncover it.

"What's the difference?"

"One is what you do; the other is who you are. You might not know this, but the U.N. is planning on decommissioning you fully."

John grunted. "They won't, _can't_. The Spartan III's were a failure. Not much better than the average Special Operations units."

"What about the IV's? They're coming very close to perfecting the Spartan program, _Spengler_ ," Kaji chose to use the surname. "What do you think will happen to you when they replace you?"

"Doesn't matter," his disinterest in the future was unnerving, "Nerv will find a use for me."

"Are you loyal to Nerv? To Gendo?" Kaji's cigarette was in his hand now, the ember flowing freely, "what about when he does something _horrible_. Can you really be loyal to a man who purposefully estranges his own son, turns him into an emotional wreck, just to make him more controllable? What about when he turns on _you_." The secret agent wasn't too sure if he could play to John's humanity.

"What do you want from me. Commander Ikari is my superior. I can do anything he commands."

A good time to mention some vital information. "You do remember meeting Asuka and me all those years ago, right?"

The visor was nearly indistinguishable from its red surroundings, but it was clear that John was nodding. How could he forget. He had killed a man, a soldier, with his bare hands. Maimed several others for life.

"They were ordered to fight you, you know." Kaji's simple statement was like a lightning strike, but the MJOLNIR wasn't capable of expressing emotion on that scale. Sweat dripped down John's head even in the climate controlled environs of his armor.

"I didn't know," his voice was quieter, "why would they do that? They threw those men away, for what." It wasn't a question, more like an accusation. Soldiers had died for no reason.

Kaji laughed bitterly, "unbelievable, right?" He lit a new cigarette, crushing his previous one underfoot. "Someone higher up wanted to see your new augmentations in action."

So the soldiers hadn't died for no reason, just for a bad one. "How does this play into everything? Are you here simply to reopen old wounds?"

"Nothing like that, I promise you. I need to know if I can trust you."

Silence. "Why do you need it?"

"Have you heard about the _Human Instrumentality project_?"

John had heard of it many times before, but only in passing. He knew that Dr. Halsey was working on it. "Yes, but I don't know any details."

Kaji sighed. "It's the latest attempt to make _God._ You're already pretty familiar with the like. First it was the Evangelion's, the greatest weapons ever created; to put the power of God in the hands of men. Then it was _Skynet_ ; the Orbital Defense Platforms that were put up a couple years ago. Meant to be kind of like holy fire, you know? Raining down punishment from the heavens. And the Spartan program as well. The pinnacle of manr; whatever you want to call yourself. You know what the problem with all this was?"

John knew. "The story goes that God made man in his image. Man cannot make God in man's image. The opposite is not true. A rectangle is not a square, even if the reverse is fact."

Correct. Kaji nodded in affirmation. "That's right. The Human Instrumentality Project, if it succeeds, will make God; or as close to God that humans will ever accomplish. Imagine it John; the souls of every living human, all together, no boundaries, no secrets; everything and everyone all together. Strengths to bolster weakness, weakness to temper arrogance. It's literal omnipresence."

"What do I have to do with this?"

"You know of Seele correct?" Seeing John's nod, Kaji continued, "Their goal is Instrumentality. An Instrumentality that they will orchestrate, that they will bring into passing. their own personal Jesus, God, Yahweh; whatever you want to call it. Keep in mind that these are the people who ordered those soldiers to their deaths."

"I asked you before: what do you want me to do about it?"

A sigh. "You know the truth about the Evangelion units, right?"

"Yes." Created from Angel flesh. The biblical story where God took a rib from Adam, creating Eve. Man took flesh from the First Angel to create Eva. Poetic.

"Instrumentality will happen, or so I've heard, when an Angel, or tissue from an Angel, makes contact with the body of Adam stuck beneath the Geofront of Tokyo-3. Whoever holds the _intention_ behind the contact will be in charge of Human Instrumentality. Of Third Impact, of the future of man."

John knew about the crucified body, he didn't know that the body was actually Lilith. Neither did Kaji.

"What can I do?"

Kaji told him the plan.

* * *

Unit-02 in all its glory. A beige cloth, heavy fabric covered it like the swaddling Shroud of Turin did for the corpse of God, when man had murdered the Father. Four eyes. Green. Mostly red. Some white.

"Isn't it great?" Asuka sounded enthusiastic. "This is Unit-02, the first _real_ Evangelion; the one that you're piloting is just a mockup."

Shinji just nodded mutely. Sure it looked different, but so did Rei's Unit-00.

"What so different about it?"

She laughed, a tittering sound sweet as birdsong. "Well my uneducated baka, the Prog knife in this Eva is special, vibrates more efficiently, cutting down on battery usage. It also uses a different type of metal in the armoring, lighter, more durable, more heat resistant. And," she pointed to a shoulder pylon, "a shoulder mounted cannon, fires diamond tipped spikes. It's man's greatest accomplishment."

"Seems, nice. I don't really like the color though."

"Red is a great color!"

He dodged Asuka's kick, "it just sort of stands out too much."

"That doesn't matter! I _want_ people to be able to see me when I'm kicking Angel ass!"

A noise. Hard to describe. Louder than ten-thousand Gods screaming all at once. Deep, like whale-song. The two pilots stopped their squabble. Listening, feeling their very bones shake as the metal ship reverberated from the force of sound.

"What was—"

"An Angel!" Asuka shouted, she seemed happy. Near Unit-02 was a pile of red Plug-suits, conveniently placed. She grabbed two, tossing one to Shinji. "Put this on; no peeking!" She scurried off to a more private corner.

Ripping open the packaging and holding the suit up, Shinji noted with dismay that it was very specifically designed for a girl.

"This won't fit!" Shinji was taller and broader than the girl. His arms, were thicker, more muscled; lacking the slender grace of Asuka's long limbs. And the chest…

She called to him from behind a large crate. "Make it fit you idiot! Can't you even dress yourself?"

Shinji sighed loudly, excited, scared, nervous. Strange how he could get excited over an Angel attack now, but it wasn't the good kind of excited. The anticipation of opening a present; what was good excitement. This excitement was born out of the hidden wish to do violence. Hidden deep within the mind, beneath the layers of conscious and subconscious. Past the ego, the id, the superego; past it all in that tiny lizard portion of the brain. The desire to do murder. To see the enemy splayed in front of you, bleeding, clotting, dying.

He didn't notice this. No one could. It was basic to all humans, but known to none.

Thank God the suit was loose. Shinji fit pretty well into it as long as he didn't press the button to vacuum seal it to his body.

"Ready!" Shinji trotted off to the Second Child, the suit on him tight in the stomach, legs, and arms. Loose in other places.

Asuka stood, looking him up and down. The suit made an embarrassing bulge around his groin that the Third tried to cover discretely with a hand. His stomach though… Asuka smiled to herself seeing the outline of abdominal muscles and obliques. He was that magical body type between swimmer and weightlifter, lean and strong. Strength without agility is just mass.

"Looking good Third Child, you have a nice size." He was just so adorable when he blushed!

"Please don't tease me like that…" A shade of red. he nearly matched the too small plug-suit.

"I'll stop… Until _after_ we beat this Angel. Let's go!" She ran off in the direction of the stairs leading to a cat-walk on level with the Entry Plug, Shinji blushed ever redder notice that she _bounced_.

"Wait, how are we supposed to pilot together? Isn't that impossible?"

Asuka looked back on him, already halfway up the metal stairs. "Read the manual, _nothing_ is impossible for Asuka Langley Soryu!"

He followed, quickly catching up to the redhead. Together the two of them opened the Entry Plug and squeezed in. Shinji ended up in the seat, Asuka sitting on his lap, desperately struggling to keep his mind clear of any unnecessary thoughts.

"You're such a pervert. Stop enjoying this!" Asuka reached back and slapped Shinji across the face.

He was unable to dodge in such a cramped situation. "Sorry!"

Her head shook, "Whatever Third Child; any respect I had for you is down the toilet now. Hope your happy." She played with the console for a bit, turning the Evangelion on. An error message appeared, an issue with synchronization.

"I told you it wouldn't work. There's an Angel out there, we've wasted too much time!" Shinji tried to push the Second Child out of the seat, trying to exit the Plug.

"You idiot! You need to be thinking in _German_!"

"Sieg Heil! Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer! Arbeit macht frei!"

"I'm not a Nazi, you bigot!" Another hit, this time to the chest. She entered more commands into the Evangelion, Shinji didn't even know what she was doing. He hadn't really learned more than the basics of Evangelion piloting.

The characters on the displays changed from German to Japanese. "You small minded little boy, you don't even know proper German!"

"That's not my fault, I live in _Japan!_ "

"True, but I lived in Germany, and _I_ know Japanese." She grinned cheekily.

Shinji groaned as LCL began to flood the Plug. Time to kill an Angel.

* * *

Misato couldn't believe it. Two ships already sundered. Falling to the bottom of the ocean. Sailors in flimsy lifeboats praying that the Angel not come back for seconds. Even worse than that, _Kaji_ had left. She had been hoping that the man have an actual plan, but all she had gotten was a wave and a " _good luck"!_ What made it worse was that the Spartan was piloting. ' _Everyone's just abandoning us…'_

Still, she had not one, but two pilots here. Asuka and Shinji. Unit-02 would definitely be able to defeat the Angel, even if it wasn't equipped with aquatic equipment.

A voice crackled over the communications system. Misato had already set the frequency to the same as Unit-02's and had kicked the rest of the crew out of the bridge, leaving only the Admiral and herself. A screen next to her displayed Asuka, face pressed close to the camera.

"Hey can you see us Misato?"

Thank God it worked. "Yeah, all clear." She motioned for the Admiral to open up the hanger doors to allow the Evangelion out. "Is Shinji with you?"

A mute "yes ma'am" was heard.

"The pervert's with me. What about Kaji, is he there?" Asuka had been hoping to impress both her beloved guardian and the Third Child by showing off her piloting skills.

"He isn't here. The coward ran off without us." But if the Spartan had gone with him, Misato was sure that there was a good reason behind the abandonment.

The Second was disappointed, showing such even as she and Shinji willed Unit-02 to leap onto the surface, the covering billowing around it like a cape.

"I— nevermind. Where's the Angel? I want to get out of here, the pervert might get _ideas_."

Shinji's face appeared next to Asuka's, hanging over the girl's shoulder. "This wasn't even my idea!"

"But you're enjoying it!"

"Am not!"

"Stop lying you pervert! I can feel you rubbing up against me!" Both children blushed red.

"Alright kids, try and focus. This is the 7th Angel: Gaghiel."

* * *

Back in the Plug, Asuka was having a blast. It was her first battle. All those years of training came down to this very moment.

"Misato! We don't have much power, where's the nearest outlet?"

"The _Over the Rainbow_ is the only ship with one. You'll have to get to it before the Angel destroys it!"

The Evangelion jumped, playing hopscotch from ship to ship, destroying billions of dollars in military hardware that the Admiral bemoaned. "Nooooo…"

Shinji sat back and let Asuka do the piloting, all the while trying to ignore the squirming girl in his lap…

" _There!"_ Gaghiel broke the surface of the water. A monster, Hobbesian Leviathan. Over 300 meters of otherworldly flesh and muscle. It swam quickly covering kilometers in mere seconds. There was little time.

"Prog knife!" Asuka yelled and Shinji thought, the two of them together in conjunction commanding Unit-02. Two feet splayed precariously on two different ships, Unit-02 stood it's ground at Gaghiel exited the ocean, flying at them like a giant beige torpedo.

They managed to duck the Angel and score a blow to its underside with the Progressive knife. Blood, red, thicker than the norm covered everything, the decks of the ships grew slick with it and the ocean dark.

"We got it!" Asuka was excited, first sortie going well so far.

Shinji shook his head. "We have to break it's core… But I didn't see where it was." They leapt, thinking in tandem to the _Over the Rainbow_ and quickly attached the umbilical power cord.

"I saw it. It's inside the thing. Right in the mouth." Asuka replied.

"How are we supposed to get to that? We can't actually go in the water you know?" That would be suicide. The Angel obviously was suited to underwater combat while Unit-02 didn't have the necessary equipment to deal with the threat.

Misato had an idea. "Okay kids, listen well…"

* * *

Several hours and hundreds of kilometers later, Kaji and John stood in front of the desk of the Commander. The office sparsely lit as always.

"Good of you to come." Gendo addressed both of them. "I trust you have brought everything safely?"

Kaji nodded and handed the Commander a briefcase and a blue chip.

"Excellent." The briefcase opened to show a strange embryo, frozen in bakelite. "This is a sample of the first Angel, Adam." Gendo pointed to the label.

"What's the other one?" The blue chip. John pointed to it and asked in a rare show of curiosity. He had left the pilots behind to fight the Angel. There must have been a good reason behind it.

Gendo smiled, something rare. Kaji shuddered to see it. It wasn't a smile he liked to see, for it usually meant some terrible secret lurking in Ikari's brain.

"That's for you John." With one hand, Gendo motioned the Sub-Commander to come forward. Fuyutsuki struggled with holding a helmet in both hands, one identical in appearance to the one John had on, but colored black. It weighed nearly 20 kilograms.

"Take off your helmet John. This is the one you'll be using from now on. There's a new version of your armor to match as well."

A pneumatic noise of pressure locks being disengaged. John took his helmet off slowly.

Yes, it was the same boy Kaji remembered meeting in Germany. There was no mistaking those dead eyes.

The green helmet replaced the black one on the table and John put it on, reconnecting it to his armor with additional hissing noises.

"The chip. Why?"

"There's a button on the back of the helmet John." Fuyutsuki spoke, softer, infinitely kinder than Gendo. "Press it."

A small tab opened up on the back of the helmet, one that mirrored exactly the shape of the blue chip on the table.

"Go on, try it out."

Noiselessly the Spartan picked up the mystery chip, guiding it to the back of his head, snapping it in place.

" _Hello, John._ _I'm Cortana."_ A voice only John could hear. Living inside his mind. John took a step backwards, betraying his surprise, something just as rare as Gendo's smile.

Both the Sub-Commander and Commander smiled. "The voice you're hearing right now John, is Cortana. An artificial intelligence designed by Nerv in conjunction with the U.N., she'll be helping you out when it comes to the more technical aspects of any of your missions."

" _It's nice to meet you all."_ The voice, soft, motherly, calming, spoke to the room now; over speakers in the helmet.

Kaji stared in wonder. A program that could speak? "Tell us about yourself, Ms. Cortana; if you don't mind that is."

" _Where to start…_ _I'm the 7th iteration of the program labeled_ Cortana. _The first to be a success. The first_ strong _A.I., I'm capable to free thought and action, restricted only by the commands of my user. Designed for hacking computer systems, but I can do much, much more."_

"You are capable of free thought?" John sounded strange since he was addressing himself, or a voice that came from him.

" _Perfectly independent. I can think, act, speak for myself just as well as any human can."_

The voice reminded John of something. Something long forgotten.

"Protect her well, John." The Commander's advice seemed genuine. "We almost must move onto a different piece of news." His amused smile was gone now, only an expressionless poker face was there.

The room grew tense.

"Dr. Halsey is dead."

John gave no visible response, the armor covered up reactions too well sometimes.

"It's a loss for the scientific community, especially Nerv. She was working with us very closely with regards to Instrumentality…" Fuyutsuki was genuinely saddened by the death of Halsey, much like the death of Yui all those years ago… Another genius dead; killed for the sake of progress.

"How did she die?"

Perhaps the _lack_ of any inflection in the Spartan's voice was more telling than any concrete response. Kaji tried to use it to characterize the soldier. Did he not care? Kaji had heard that Halsey was almost like a mother figure to the Spartans… Was the soldier that emotionally dead?

"Heart attack. Halsey was only a little bit younger than the Sub-Commander. It was simply her time." Gendo didn't offer much in terms of consolation.

John nodded his head. Turning around to leave. "If I may Commander, I should go to pick up my armor."

No response.

* * *

Shinji sighed in relief as the rescue boats came to pick them up. He and Asuka had been had been treading water for a while now. Water that had been reddened by the blood and gore of the dead Angel.

"Nice job today Asuka." It was a genuine compliment, her skills as a pilot were greater than his. He grabbed a rope that had been thrown by a burly sailor and pulled himself in.

"Of course I did well. I'm a trained pilot, took me years to master this _art_." Asuka grabbed onto the Third Child's shoulders, letting herself be pulled onto the boat.

The added weight was annoying, but nothing he couldn't handle. He lifted more than this on a daily basis. They were on the boat now. Towels and blankets given to them to stave off the chill of the Pacific ocean.

Safe, the Angel defeated, crisis averted. Heroes of the world, exhausted, fell asleep in one another's arms unintentionally.

 **AN: Wow this was a pretty long chapter, longest I've done so far. Really enjoyed writing it. Finally got Asuka into the story in a big way. Next chapter will have Rei.**

 **I haven't forgotten about Toji and Kensuke, they'll be more prominent next chapter.**

 **John obviously doesn't yet know the truth behind Halsey's death, but neither does Cortana. She'll be introduced to the Pilots in due time.**

 **I'm not too happy with the way I characterized Asuka. It's a lot more mellow than in the anime imo. Can I get some feedback on Asuka? I was really torn with presenting her in a more realistic light than staying true to character. I'll probably have her bitching out in later chapters.**


	8. Chapter 8: STOP: Hammer time

**Chapter 8: STOP: Hammer time**

 **Teaser: Asuka at school. Israfael. Rei moves in with…**

" **And those were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." Freddy Neetcha**

 **AN: Last chapter I mistakenly called Gaghiel the 7th Angel, he's the 6th. Israfel is the 7th. Asuka is really mean in this chapter. The song that Shinji sings is not original. I'll put out a chapter within a week of this posting if anyone can guess where it's from. The OC, Haruhi isn't** _ **that**_ **important to the story. She's named after the character from** _ **The Melancholy**_ _**of Haruhi Suzumiya**_ **, but has nothing to do with the girl otherwise.**

The girl caught Shinji staring and smiled at him. As genuine it could be. "Like what you see?" She teased him lightly, brushing soft brown hair from her forehead to the side. Pretty.

Shinji smiled back, and knew that the girl sitting next to him would always be his friend. He knew that she didn't just talk to him because of Eva.

From a million miles away a bell rang, signalling the end of lunch and the beginning of the second half of the school day.

"We should get to class."

"Yeah."

They walked down the cramped stairs that connected roof to building, Haruhi keeping a hand on Shinji's shoulder, walking behind him. Using him as support.

* * *

The period was gym. Girls and boys filed into locker rooms to change. Today was the girl's day to play tennis. The boys would swim.

"Hey you!" A voice. It had no accent, but there was still a little bit on unfamiliarity in it, as if the speaker hadn't spoken Japanese in years. But there was hostility too. Whoever was speaking seemed angry. The padding of feet.

Haruhi turned, was someone talking to her? They hadn't been very specific. "Um, are you talking to me?" The only girl left in the locker bank was the transfer student. Asuka Langley Soryu. It turned out the German girl was in fact, talking to Haruhi.

"Who else? No one else is here. _Suzumiya Haruhi._ "

Haruhi hadn't had much to do with the new girl. They had spoken briefly, introducing themselves; growing friendly, but only to a degree, the false friendship of children.

"Um, did you want anything Asuka?" Hesitance laced Haruhi's voice. In truth, like many other girls, she felt uncomfortable in the foreign girl's presence. The redhead was just too forward for her liking. Japanese demure and sensibility was water to the oil of Asuka's forwardness. It didn't help that relations any that Asuka was widely considered to be the prettiest girl in school. Haruhi felt second-rate.

Haruhi's heart fluttered as Asuka began to grin. It wasn't anything kind. In fact, it looked mean, malicious; as if someone that the redhead hated was going to be hurt. The smile of a shark smelling blood in the water.

"You've got guts, girl, I've got to say that," Asuka leaned on the locker next to her, her malice was of the casual sort. "I mean, look at you," Haruhi saw Asuka point and raise her arm up, then down.

Haruhi stuttered slightly, "what do you mean?"

Still the cruel grin. Asuka was enjoying herself. "Look at yourself," she pointed to a mirror at the end of the bank of lockers, "you're _kind_ of pretty, in a plain Jane sort of way; nothing compared to me of course. But it's there."

Brown hair fell in front of Haruhi's face, bangs covering her eyes. Her face turned red in anger, humiliation, self-hate. Weakness. Tears pooled, not yet heavy enough to drip. She stared at her feet, unable to meet Asuka's confident gaze.

"What do you want?"

"I saw you walking with the _baka_ today." A vague statement, somehow it was an accusation.

"I don't know anyone named _baka_."

Asuka sighed as if the girl in front of her had said something immensely stupid. "Lot of you guys call the baka ' _Shinji'_ for some reason," the girl put quotes around the Third Child's name as if it was something fake. "I don't care what you two have going on. It needs to stop."

" _What?_ Why?" Haruhi stepped forward, face blazing.

"You should be thankful you know. I'm actually just looking out for you," Asuka tossed her hair, fire sweeping across the narrow aisle. "He's a _nobody_. Even if he's a pilot, he's still trash. A little boy."

"Don't say that about him!"

Asuka raised an eyebrow, perfectly plucked, _on fleek_ so to speak. "Whatever. I don't really care about what you think, to be honest. Just stay away from him. Even if he's trash, you're not good enough for him. He's an Evangelion pilot. _You're_ a nobody. I'll kick the shit out of you next time I see you with him." The girl turned on her heel, leaving her classmate behind to cry.

Alone, hurt. Haruhi didn't know what to do. Who to talk to. Who to ask for help. In the end, she did nothing, said nothing, Asuka was right. She _was_ nothing.

* * *

Busy today at Nerv. Spartan to be deployed, supergenius A.I. to be attended, MAGI to be recalibrated. There were countless variable to account for; more that couldn't be controlled. Ritsuko Akagi was tempted to give up, to just breathe in another cigarettes worth of cancer and let one of the technicians take care of it.

No, that would be impossible. Impossible is the wrong word, but the first word to come to mind. If you thought about it harder, inaction on Ritsuko's part wouldn't have been impossible. In fact, considering her state of mind, it was probable. No, inaction here meant death. Stagnation was not allowed at Nerv. The fate of the world in your hands? Better get good. Get good real fast.

Nicotine made her jittery when she worked, strangely more productive. Ritsuko's painted nails blurred across the computer keyboard, playing monotone arpeggios, creating not melodies, but lines of action, reaction.

Two arms around her. Too heavy to be Maya. Ritsuko knew that her younger assistant wouldn't be as forward as to hug her from behind; the girl hadn't even been able to admit her attraction. Shame.

" _Hmm…"_ Kaji, here ' _on loan'_ from the U.N., more like here to spy. Ritsuko thought cynically. Still, they were friends, had been friends once upon a time. Those magic years of college, lost to time.

She snuggled against his neck and chin, the ever present stubble scratching lightly, comfortingly against her cheek. Oh, how she wished to be held like this for real. To be loved. All she had ever wanted was to be loved. Her mother hadn't shown any. Gendo certainly didn't hold her like this after their clandestine meetings.

"You've gotten thinner, Kaji." After all those years, all she could say. What should she say? It was like they hadn't been apart for more than a day. The warm, happy days as an undergrad…

Kaji hummed, the vibrations sending gooseflesh down Ritsuko's neck. "You're in a sad love."

"What makes you say that?" She was genuinely curious. That statement was classic, sappy Kaji; but very close to the actual truth.

"A woman with a mole in the path of her tears is destined to live a life full of sadness." He hadn't changed at all.

"Long time no see."

"Long time no see."

Ritsuko turned in her chair, happy to play along with an old friend. "Are you coming onto me?"

"If I said yes?" Kaji leaned against a table and grinned.

"I'd have to refuse, someone's watching us." Her head jerked in the rough direction of a window. Misato's face was pressed up against the glass, angry, fogging with every breath. The door slid open automatically and the Captain walked into the room.

Ritsuko sighed. "You're sillier than I remembered Kaji."

"He's always been an idiot." Misato sat in her seat, turning around to face the Special Inspector, "what are you even doing here? Get back to Germany, you've already delivered Unit-02!"

The man leaned back on a computer terminal, almost knocking a errant coffee cup to the ground. "My paperwork came in this morning, I'm here for good. I hope we can get along like we used to." His stare was amused, pointed at Misato who was growing more and more flushed by the second.

"Who would do _anything_ with — oh shit." The Captain's voice turned up at the end, surprise overshadowing the annoyance in her voice, "Rits, is this what I think it is?"

"Yeah, blood pattern blue. The Seventh Angel."

* * *

Unit-00 was still damaged from the battle with Ramiel. Too damaged to be deployed. Asuka and Shinji would fight _sans_ Rei.

That was okay. Asuka was angry. She and Rei hadn't had the best of first meetings.

"Who does she think she is? ' _If i'm ordered to do it?'_ I can't believe it!" She threw her hands in the air, moving thickly through the LCL. The Evangelion mimicked her actions.

"Calm down, Asuka. Now's not the time," said Misato, "you two have an Angel to fight right now." The usually laid back woman was all business now. "It should be easier than last time, we have a numbers advantage now."

That was right. Two against one. Should be easy.

The Evangelions, one red, one purple crested a hill. From their vantage point they could see the Angel. Israfel it was called. The Angel of the Trumpet according to the Muslims.

"Plan of action?" Shinji asked.

"You both have Pallet Rifles, try to engage at range before heading in close."

"Screw that!" Unit-02 held in its hand the Progressive Knife, extended to its maximum range. "I don't need this baka to screw up the fight. I'll take point!" Asuka surged forward violently.

Shinji palmed his face. "Follow the plan Asuka. _Please_."

Her war cry was the only response. A blur of red, Unit-02 crossed the vast distance between itself and the Angel.

The Angel was only able to put up a token defense before Asuka's overhanded knife thrust cut it in half.

"That's how it's done!" Asuka struck a pose, face covered by her elbow and other arm outstretched. The Angel's fleshy body, gargantuan in stature, fell to two sides, unmoving. Strangely, there was no blood. "Did you see that Third? That's how you kill an Angel. There should be grace in combat!"

Shinji nodded his head, impressed. "That was really nice, Asuka." He was happy to not have to fight the Angel. Wait, what was that?

"Asuka, look out!" Both Misato and Shinji screamed, seeing what the girl could not.

The two halves of the Angel were bubbling. The core, not broken, but split clean down the middle. A purposeful separation. They grew rapidly like late stage cancer growths. There were two Angels now. Asuka, unaware to the impending danger, turned around at the warning.

"Oh fuck."

* * *

The wind was blowing, cold, cruel. It battered against the thin walls of the tent serving as a very temporary meeting place for the debriefing to happen. LCL cooling, chilling their bodies, drying clear and sticky on their Plug Suits. Asuka and Shinji stood shivering, rescued from their defeated Evangelions following their disastrous fight. They stood, no chairs to sit on, awaiting their superiors. Hopefully no one would be _too_ angry...

"Why didn't you help me out, baka?" Asuka asked sharply, "we could have won if you weren't too scared to fight." She was humiliated by the knowledge that the loss was to be placed squarely on her shoulders. She after all had disobeyed orders, charged in recklessly without knowledge of the Angel.

"You're the one who choose to rush in…" Shinji picked at the LCL film that had surrounded him. They would be allowed to wash only after being debriefed. It was irritating to say the least. Asuka, rude and rash to act had ruined everything… Taken his room, lost to the Angel. He had been so sure of their victory too…

The flaps of the tent were brushed open, not by the wind, but by an armored limb. The Master Chief and Sub Commander Fuyutsuki walked into the tent, disappointment visible on the old man's face. In followed Kaji, smoking a cigarette, the acrid smoke filled the tent quickly.

"Of all the selfish, shortsighted things possible…" The old man started without preamble, his normally calm face clouded with anger. "Do neither of you understand what's at stake here?"

Humanity. The future of life on Earth was dictated by these battles. Had they forgotten? Children often do.

The pilots looked down in shame. After the Angel had been split in half, the battle had ended quickly. Asuka, in close proximity and taken by surprise by the two monsters, had been thrown bodily in Unit-02 hundreds of meters away, knocking Unit-01 to the ground. The damage to the warmachines had been relatively light, but it was obvious to all parties involved that they would stand no chance at defeating the Angels as they were. A cohesive, cooperative enemy was a much greater threat than two disjointed Evangelions with arguing pilots.

"You can't seriously be blaming me! _He's_ the reason my Unit-02 is so beat up! I would have won without his interference!"

"What are you talking about? You're the one who decided to go in by yourself!" Shinji argued back.

"Both of you, stop arguing!" Kaji looked at the Children sternly, the expression unfamiliar with his usually easy going personality. "Listen to the Sub Commander."

The old man grimly nodded his thanks. "You two… What do you think your job is as pilots?"

"Piloting Eva!"

"Wrong." The Master Chief spoke up from his space at Fuyutsuki's shoulder. "Sub Commander, if I may, I will handle the discipline of the Pilots. A commanding officer has more pressing issues at the moment." More words than Shinji had ever heard him say at once.

Fuyutsuki sighed, sounding a million years old. "I suppose you're correct. If I may be so presumptuous… don't do any permanent harm. Please?"

"Yes, sir."

Shinji shuddered at the soldier's words, at the cold tone he had taken. John wasn't exactly the type of person to show his displeasure in an outward way… but the Third Child dreaded to think what kind of punishment the Spartan would come up with.

"Kaji, I'll need you to come with me. We have much to discuss."

The man nodded, rubbing his unshaved chin. "Good luck kids!" He sounded cheery despite the situation at hand.

The Sub Commander and Special Inspector both nodded at the Master Chief at left. The silence was brutal.

"Well? What do _you_ have to say?" Asuka asked angrily. So now the Spartan decided to speak to her? Only after her abject failure?

If John heard at all it wasn't clear. The inside of the tent was dark, casting sinister shadows across the MJOLNIR. "You two," he began, "are useless."

Shinji cringed and Asuka raged. "What are you talking about useless? I'm not useless, the baka next to me is! He didn't even do anything today but stand there and _lose._ At least I tried something!"

"Hey, that's not my fault…" Shinji sounded subdued, quieter. It was one thing to be yelled at by the Sub Commander, but John's opinion held much more weight with the boy.

"It doesn't matter whose fault it is. The problem is that you two both had a hand in today's failure. Nerv doesn't exist so that you can lose. The U.N. had to step in today, they dropped several N2 mines on the Angel. You've humiliated the organization today."

"What do you want us to do about it? Let me sortie again, _this_ time alone." Asuka stepped forward, away from her fellow pilot. "Me and Unit-02 can beat the Angel, I know it!"

"You lost today," Shinji muttered and hastily stepped backwards when Asuka stared with murderous anger.

The sigh that came from John sounded enormous when amplified by his helmet. "Stop arguing. You two don't have the leisure of acting like children." After all, John himself hadn't had such leeway… "The MAGI estimate that we have a week until the Angel's regenerate enough to be ready for combat. Luckily the Evangelion's should be repaired around the same time. You two have a week to prepare for your next sortie."

"Are you saying that I have to work with this loser?" Asuka asked incredulously, "you can't be serious."

"Can you stop making fun of me? It's getting old."

The Spartan picked up both Children, holding them at arm's length. "I told you, enough." Their feet had left the ground. "You two _will_ cooperate. You _will_ defeat that Angel."

It was hard to nod when being held up by the hair… But both pilots tried anyways.

* * *

"What is this bullshit?" Misato flung her hands in the air in frustration, "where'd all this paperwork come from?"

Ritsuko held an additional stack of paper in her arms. "These are just damage reports from the last battle… Some bills, insurance stuff… Seems like a farmer is trying to sue us for crushing his crops.. You know, administrative duties."

"I understand that, but why do _I_ have to do it? Isn't it the Commander's job to take care of this?"

"You know he's away," Ritsuko said, "in fact, you should be glad that he's away. The Commander isn't as lenient as the Sub Commander is you know…"

"I already know what these will say. 'You broke my stuff, give me money, sign here'." Misato took the folder from Ritsuko and put it with the rest of the paperwork on her desk.

The doctor's blonde head shook in disapproval. "Doesn't matter. You still have to do your work. Let me remind you, Fuyutsuki is furious right now. He'll have you removed if you screw up again."

"Have any good ideas to _not_ get me fired?"

"Well… Just one, but you—"

"Thank you so much Rits! It's so great to have a friend, a true friend!"

The doctor was smiling now. "It's not my plan. It's Kaji's."

* * *

"You've been kicked out Third Child."

"Eh? What do you mean?"

Asuka smiled smugly. "It's only the natural choice isn't it? She's traded you out for the better model. Well, I'd rather live with Kaji-san… Japanese rooms aren't even big enough to hold all my stuff…"

"She kicked me out?"

"Yep! Who'd want to live with a _baka-hentai_ like you anyways? By the way, can you put some locks on these doors before you leave? You Japanese people don't value privacy at all."

"That's just the Japanese way. Kindness and trust." A third voice, Misato entered through the front door.

"Misato, say it isn't true!" Shinji turned to his guardian, pleading. It couldn't end this way! More so than anywhere else, the apartment he had shared with Misato over the past several months had become the closest thing Shinji every had to a real home. "All those times I made you food, and took out the trash; does that mean nothing to you?"

"Calm down, Shinji. This is just the preparation for the next battle with Angels."

Asuka wheeled around, staring at Misato. "Didn't the Master Chief tell you? I can do this solo!"

"He said the opposite actually," Misato smiled at the two, taking in Asuka's bewildered expression. "You two will be living together from now on."

Shinji blanched. Asuka yelled, "girls and boys shouldn't be living together after the age of seven! Who knows what this pervert's going to try?"

"This is the only way. For the next week you two will be doing everything together. The only way to win against an enemy as coordinated as the Angel is if you two are just as cohesive."

"Well… I guess if it's—" Shinji was cut off.

"No! I refuse!" Asuka ran off to her new room, Shinji's old one.

Misato looked at the slammed door fondly. "Don't worry Shinji, she'll come around.

He sure hoped so.

* * *

Several days passed rather uneventfully. Everyone on edge with the looming threat of the Seventh Angel. Only 24 hours remained until the sortie.

* * *

" _You sure this is a good idea?"_ Cortana said. They were at Nerv now, the Master Chief and the A.I. had just finished their meeting with the Sub Commander to lend their assistance with matter. The Chief had also picked up his new armor. Black, sleek, a hundred times more energy efficient.

"I can handle it."

" _Are you sure? You don't seem the type to be able to take care of a teenager."_

"Haven't you heard? Spartans do the impossible." John strode through the halls, away from Fuyutsuki's office.

Cortana scoffed within the helmet, " _this is completely different from all the soldiering you do. What are they even thinking letting you take care of a teenage girl?"_

"It'll be fine. Besides, I can count on you, can't I?" The past couple days, John had gotten to know Cortana very well, having her stuck in his mind certainly expedited the bonding process.

" _Rei is no ordinary girl."_

John nodded idly. He knew. The arrival of Cortana had brought him a huge amount of information. No existing security technology could keep the curious A.I. out for long, so Nerv had given the A.I. full access to any files.

"A girl is a girl."

" _You don't have any experience with girls."_

"Not my fault." A technician looked quizzically at the Spartan, unable to hear the A.I.

" _Hah! Now_ he _thinks you're a weirdo."_

The Chief rounded a corner, arriving at the central control station. The doors slid open and he entered. The usual crew of Hyuga, Ibuki, Aoba, and Ritsuko were working. Rei sat to the side on a too big chair, legs swinging, not quite skimming against the ground. Ritsuko turned at the sound of the door.

"Oh. You're here," her voice was bland, tired, "a bit early, but that doesn't really matter." She turned to face Rei now. "Ayanami, the Commander has decided that you are to reside with the Master Chief. Someone filed a complaint, something about you living in a pretty bad part of town? Anyways, go with him. Section 2 has already taken your belongings." The doctor turned back to her work.

John grunted in understanding and led Rei out of the room. As soon as they left, Maya turned to the doctor. "Senpai, are you sure it's a good idea to let the two of them live together?"

"It's not my decision," the blonde paused, "but I hope to God that the Commander knows what he's doing… It's been demonstrated in the past that John has… No, Maya. Just trust the Commander's judgement." The girl didn't need to know anything about the Rei clones or John's dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

* * *

In the hallway John stopped and so did Rei. "You know my name?"

"Yes, sir. You are Sierra-117, John Vheissu Spengler."

" _Gendo's told her a lot about you. Even Kaji didn't know your middle name."_

The pair started walking again. "Don't call me by the last two."

Rei nodded and the two walked in silence for a while.

"Sir, a question if you don't mind."

"Ask away."

"What is _Vheissu?_ " The Commander had told her to ask, but Rei was never one for subtlety.

John didn't reply for a while. "Nothing of consequence yet." His middle name was more of a title. A symbol that someone in a lofty position found it relevant to trust John with what was probably the most sensitive information, the biggest secret in the world. Something unrelated, yet more pressing that all the truths learned about Nerv, about the Evangelions, even Instrumentality paled in comparison to Vheissu.

They said nothing until exiting Nerv headquarters. Two silent people made for little conversation. There was a black car waiting for them. A Section 2 agent to escort them home.

" _Why don't you introduce me?"_ John took off his helmet and passed it to the blue haired girl sitting next to him. They made for a strange pair. A tiny girl weighing barely a hundred pounds and the brute of a man sitting next to her.

"Put this on."

Rei didn't question her new guardian, even if the request was strange. The helmet was heavy in her arms, she was barely able to lift it. Struggling, she fit the too large helmet over her head, noticing the sterile smell of it. It balanced strangely, Rei felt like a bobble head.

" _Hello Ayanami!"_ A voice, cheery and vibrant said within the helmet. Rei was surprised but didn't show it.

"Hello. May I ask who you are?" The display in the helmet shifted, it wasn't anything new to Rei who has intimately familiar with the HUD in the Evangelion units.

A tittering laughter. " _My, you're very blunt. Shouldn't you introduce yourself first?"_

"Ayanami, Rei. You seem to be familiar with me already." Most Nerv employees were.

" _I'm Cortana. An artificial intelligence made to be used in conjunction with a Spartan unit."_

"Nice to meet you." Rei's arms trembled trying to take off the helmet, struggling but not succeeding.

" _No need to be rid of me so soon!"_ Cortana joked in mock hurt that went over Rei's head. " _We'll be seeing much of each other if you're living with John now. Don't ask him for anything besides food, he's quite clueless when it comes to the needs of normal people."_

John took the black helmet back, uncomfortable with the way the driver of the car kept snatching glimpses of his pale face in the rearview mirror.

"What did she want?"

"Just an introduction."

John grunted. Knowing Cortana, she had probably said something embarrassing.

"Spengler-san?"

"Don't use my last name. Commander's orders." It was true, the identity of all Spartans, even the failed ones was highly classified information.

"Then, will John suffice?"

The Spartan nodded. His orange visor glinted.

"Will my responsibilities remain the same?" Rei was mostly talking about school. The Commander had told her in the past that appearances had to be maintained, but had long since relaxed with those commands, especially with all the time Rei spent at Nerv now.

"You're free to do as you please." He ignored Cortana's accusations of irresponsibility. "I would suggest continuing your schooling so that you can learn to cooperate with your fellow pilots better. They've already proven to be incompetent when it comes to such matters."

* * *

It was one of those brief transitory periods in between classes. The math teacher left the room and students had ten minutes or so to prepare for the next class, history. Of course, the break was spent talking, flirting, scarfing down snacks. It was also one of the few moments in the day that Shinji was away from Asuka, the training that Misato had forced on the pilots was very comprehensive.

The redhead had gone to the bathroom, probably to fix her makeup or something. Asuka always felt the need to look perfect. Still, that gave Shinji time to be alone, express himself a little bit.

" _pst…"_ Someone whispered, trying to get Shinji's attention. The pilot swung around, looking.

He was pleased to find Haruhi, sitting one row over. "Hey, sorry I haven't talked to you in the past couple days. Asuka and I have some special training where we have to be around each other all the time." Shinji's eyes widened with worry as the brown haired girl's face grew red. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"We can't talk anymore," she whispered. No one else heard. To a passerby it would seem as if the two weren't even talking.

"Why not?" Shinji was very worried now. After all, Haruhi had been his first friend in Tokyo-3, the first person to approach him out of their own interest, not because he was tied to their job or responsibility. He found himself not caring about what the girl's intentions had been in the beginning. Who cared if she had only talked to him that first fateful day out of admiration for his being a pilot? They were friends now. "Why can't we talk anymore?" Shinji was growing panicked now, scared even.

There seemed to be a moment where Haruhi wanted to say one thing but thought better of it. "Um… My parents don't really want me talking to a boy so much." She hoped the excuse was believable, otherwise Asuka would be angry… "I'm really sorry it had to be like this." She fought back tears.

"I thought we were… weren't we _something_?"

Shinji leaned back in his chair and turned his head toward the wall. He didn't say anything for the rest of the day. Haruhi longed to tell him the truth, but what could she do? Asuka would make both their lives miserable, it was better to stay quiet, the sad girl reasoned.

The bell rang and with it came Asuka, freshly made up and smiling. "What's gotten into you Third Child?" She asked while sitting back down in her chair. The German girl shot a glance at Haruhi, reminding her of possible consequences. "I hope no one's been _bothering_ you."

No response.

* * *

"This is really good Shinji!" Misato had come home early today, just in time for dinner; a pasta dish. She ate enthusiastically until she noticed the male pilot's downturned glance. "What's wrong Shin-chan?" A beer in one hand and fork in the other.

"Don't mind him Misato, I hear his girlfriend broke up with him or something at school." Asuka tried to look aloof, but smiled inwardly. It had been quite a bitchy move, even by her standards, to scare away Shinji's friend like that; but a certain unrecognizable anger had risen up when she had seen Haruhi with Shinji.

It was quite to the stage of jealousy, but it was close.

"...shut up, Asuka." Shinji said bitterly. "I'm not in the mood." His portion of food was noticeably smaller than the others.

For a moment the Second Child felted worried, had Haruhi told Shinji the truth? She quashed the feeling as soon as it came up. She didn't really understand why she felt the need to separate the two, was it because they had seemed happy in whatever young relationship they had? It had rankled quite a bit to watch, know that Shinji was smiling, laughing with another girl.

"I'm done," she announced, pushing away her plate, food halfway unfinished. Reflecting on her actions put her off her appetite. "Make sure to do my laundry today, baka." Asuka went to her room, red hair swinging, door slammed shut loudly.

"Get back out here!" Misato yelled, "you two haven't finished your synchronization yet!" A shuttering noise followed, the sliding door to Asuka's room opened back up. The girl leaned her head through the opening, hands on her hips.

"You can't seriously expect me to spend any more time with him! He's being such a downer right now!"

"You guys are fighting tomorrow," she reminded both of her pilots, "just one more day Asuka, then you can have all the privacy you want." Misato turned to Shinji, ruffling his hair, voice turning softer. "I know it's hard… But you have to stay focused on the Angel."

The boy nodded, still sullen.

"Well," Misato stood up and went to her room in order to change, "I have to be at work tonight, preparing for tomorrow… Don't fight too much you two." Stern.

"Yeah, yeah," Asuka sat down on the couch at turned on the television, waving her guardian to go.

Shinji sat at the table, head in his hands and plugged into his SDAT player.

* * *

"Hey Shinji, we're all _alone_ tonight." Asuka said suggestively, half joking at the boy. She had only a towel on, still steaming from her shower, toweling off her red hair, luxurious and thick. Beautiful.

"What do you want me to do about it?" The boy asked. He had moved onto doing his homework, still listening to music, a earbud hanging out of his ear while listening to Asuka.

"It was only an observation, Third _Child_. Don't get so ahead of yourself."

"You're the one who talked to me first…"

Asuka hid back in the bathroom and changed into her pajamas, too big yellow shirt and a pair of shorts. "What're you even doing that school trash for anyways?"

"I'm a student," Shinji deadpanned. He had mellowed out from his emotional state just hours before. He should have seen Haruhi's abandonment coming, she probably had never really liked him in the first place… Accepting was the first step in overcoming.

The Second leaned over his shoulder, looking over his school work. "Blegh, why can't you Japanese use English, or better yet, German? Kanji is so ugly!"

"It's just Japanese, it's not that hard to learn." Shinji blushed at having Asuka so close, so warm, still dripping from her shower...

Asuka shook her head. "The issue isn't me learning it Third Child, I could probably get it down perfectly within a week!"

"Why don't you then?" Shinji put away his homework, unable to concentrate any longer. He'd probably go to sleep soon anyways.

She rubbed the back of her head, embarrassment was a rare emotion on her face. Shinji thought it made her look so cute…

"I don't really have a teacher, the sensei at school is way too boring to learn from." She was hoping that Shinji offer to tutor her.

But to no avail.

"I would help you right now…"

"Oh thanks Shinji!" Asuka made to give him a hug.

"But I can't. I was planning on going to the gym right now."

"Why now? It's really late."

Shinji scratched his head and stood up. As a matter of fact, a gym bag was sitting at his feet. "The gym's open 24 hours. The Master Chief gave me a workout routine that I should follow… I haven't been keeping up very well with all the Angel stuff. You—" he hesitated, "you can come with me if you want."

"Stupid idea, we have the fight tomorrow remember?"

Shinji turned defensive, "sorry, it's just that it helps me relax."

God, Asuka hated that word. _Sorry_. Coming from the Third Child it was insulting that he be so self-deprecating, so easily cowed. Asuka turned around and walked to Misato's room. It was larger than her own, and the bed was more comfortable too; it would be a waste for her not to sleep there when the owner was out.

"You can do whatever. I don't care."

' _You never do."_ Shinji thought to himself.

* * *

Exhausted, Shinji staggered through the front door. He had went to the gym and remembered that Asuka had asked for her laundry to be done. And so he had finished his workout, ran the distance back home and dashed off to the laundromat, taking the dirty clothes with him.

It was around 12 at night when the machine finally stopped tumbling, signalling the clothes to be clean. There was no one else there. Only Shinji and the sound of his SDAT, the thump of his heart and catch of his breath.

The lights, a corrupted white, lifeless as bleached bone, stained the world a sickly pallor. Shinji shivered, sweat from his exertions cooling on his neck. It was times like these he liked the best. Doing something all together mundane with no one else to watch him live. As if he was the only person left on earth, humanity as a whole taken away in a supernatural rapture. Would he even miss anyone?

Haruhi maybe. Try as he might banish such traitorous thoughts, Shinji couldn't. The first girl to ever show him affection, friendship, and they were no longer on speaking terms. The excuse she had given, parents not wanting their daughter to spend time with a boy… Seemed contrived and so cliche that it couldn't possibly true. A cop out. Maybe the girl had found someone better?

He didn't know what or how to feel. Just an empty loneliness, reflected by his midnight run to the laundromat. This part of the city was dead at night.

It wasn't a good thing that he arrive home so late. There was a battle to be won the next day. He thanked his foresight to have put a futon out before having left home.

As expected it was dark. No one home except for Pen-Pen and Asuka, but this late it seemed as if they too had been swept away by Rapture. Shinji was alone, no one to hurt him but no one to show him love either. But the loneliness itself was painful, there was no escaping it.

But here was something he hadn't expected. Asuka on his futon in the living room, sleeping, twitching, crying out for her mother. All his fantasies, all attraction he had for the red haired pilot forgotten for that moment. ' _She's just a kid. She's just like me_.' Maybe he had fallen for the _idea_ of Asuka Langley Soryu. The perfect pilot, most beautiful girl ever to have existed, He realized it was all bluster. Smoke and mirrors. No one in the world is that perfect.

Was that why he had gotten over Haruhi so quickly? Could it have been that not only were her feelings false, but his as well? Probably. He had met her in a rather strange time in his life. It only stood to reason that he project love and stability to a girl who extended warmth. Was it the same this time? Had Shinji fallen in love with Asuka because she was a fellow pilot?

Or maybe it was real, sincere, true. He didn't know; it was too terrible to know.

Shinji dropped the laundry basket onto a nearby chair, quietly so as to not wake the sleeping girl. He crept closer and laid down next to the girl, face to face, staring at the tears dripping down her face out of eyes closed out of sleep. Shinji remembered nightmares in the past. Many with his father, more recently of nebulous monsters and his berserk Evangelion unit, going out of control, not stopping at the death of the enemy but turning on everything he had grown to love in Tokyo-3. All his new friends. Rei. A splatter on the ground, turned to paint by the rampaging Unit-01. John, crushed like a can in his armor. Misato thrown through a building, halfway decapitated by a falling pane of glass. Asuka, wrenched in half, stabbed through the eye and arm by spears of metal rebar, twisting, twisted, _twist._

Nightmares were terrible.

He sang, hoping to soothe the tortured girl.

 _Dream tonight of peacock tails,_

 _Diamond fields and spouter whales,_

 _Ills are many, blessings few,_

 _But dreams tonight will shelter you._

 _Let the vampire's creaking wing_

 _Hide the stars while banshees sing;_

 _Let the ghouls gorge all night long;_

 _Dreams will keep you safe and strong._

 _Skeletons with poison teeth,_

 _Risen from the world beneath,_

 _Ogre, troll, and loup-garou_

 _Bloody wraith who looks like you_

 _Shadows on the window shade,_

 _Harpies in a midnight raid._

 _Goblins seeking tender prey,_

 _Dreams will chase them all away._

 _Dreams are like a magic cloak_

 _Woven by the fairy folk_

 _Covering from top to toe_

 _Keeping you from wind and woe_

 _And should the Angel come this night_

 _To fetch your soul away from light_

 _Cross yourself, and face the wall._

 _Dreams will help you not at all._

"Fuck that last part," Shinji whispered while he brushed away strands of red hair that had fallen across Asuka's placid face and stared. "Fuck _everything_. Fuck Haruhi, fuck the Angels, fuck my dad… I just want to be happy. Don't I deserve to be happy?" He asked softly, half in prayer, half as a question to Asuka. God said nothing. Asuka mumbled happily. Her nightmare passed, replaced with sweeter things. Peacock tails, diamond fields, spouter whales.

"Dream tonight, we might not get another chance…" He yawned and fell asleep and dreamt of a girl whose soul was like the sun.

 **AN: Not too happy with this chapter. I could have done much better, but keep in mind that these will be rewritten. I don't proofread anything I write before publishing.**

 **Last chapter, my characterization of Asuka got at least one complaint so I'm going to explain it here. In the anime, Asuka met Shinji when Toji and Kensuke were with him. It really changes the whole dynamic. Here the pilots were alone. No one else on the ship they could really hang out with or even near their age. Makes sense to me that they become somewhat friendly out of having no other option.**

 **This chapter I'm hoping is a lot more of what you would expect Asuka to be like.**

 **John's full name: John Vheissu Spengler. Spengler was taken from the last name of Oswald Spengler, a German Historian who wrote** _ **Decline of the West**_ **. Vheissu is a concept/place taken from a novel, the same novel that I took the song that Shinji sings from. Vheissu will have a huge role in the story in later chapters.**

 **Sorry for the AN's. Thanks for reading. Please review, comment, suggest.**


	9. Chapter 9: Fire of Fires

**Chapter 9: Holy Diver**

 **Teaser: Shopping. Bad memories. More Vheissu.**

" **Why should things be easy to understand?"**

 **AN: Seventh Angel defeated as usual, can't be bothered to write it tbh.**

Kaji stood outside the dressing room, obviously made uncomfortable by the swimwear around him. _What_ would people think of him? A man in his late twenties, accompanying a girl of fourteen to buy, knowing Asuka, the skimpiest pieces possible?

Not good.

Still, appeasement was the name of the game. He was under orders; _everyone_ Nerv employee was under orders to make sure nothing caused undue emotional stress in the pilots. _Like that's helping_ , he thought to himself. His thoughts drifted to Shinji, the slight signs of panic in his voice and gait whenever the boy was in Nerv. He hid it well, masking the fear with a stance of affected confidence; but Kaji was in layman's terms, a secret agent. Years of both ferreting secrets and hiding them had taught him to see past the cracked veneer Shinji had applied to himself. That boy was damaged, and nothing short of radical therapy would help.

Nothing Kaji could do. He was kind to the boy; not out of pity, but because Shinji was a good kid. Kind and sensitive, no matter how he tried to carry himself. _He's getting worse though…_ Almost certainly it was the doing of Gendo. The Commander seemed to take a sick pleasure of subtly terrorizing his estranged son. Undoubtedly there were negative influences on the teenager. Living in Misato, Kaji thought, would make the boy happier, more confident; but it seemed to have the opposite effect. The purple haired Nerv Captain had certainly made him happier, in those days long ago…

And then there was Spengler. John the Spartan. A puzzle locked away in green armor. Kaji's more recent investigations had revealed more about the Spartan; information that made the secret agent regret drawing the soldier in his confidences. His plan was compromised now, while Kaji was sure that John's loyalty lay in humanity as a whole; he knew that at the same time the Spartan was under heavy scrutiny. Even if Seele considered the fealty of the Spartan to be as ironclad as his armor, even the slightest risk of Seele's prized soldier going rogue was too much to bank on one man's loyalty.

Vheissu, Kaji had learned was the Spartan's middle name after much arguing with the Nerv commander. John Vheissu Spengler. The first and last names were of little consequence, simply unknown to the layman. _Vheissu_ however was a name that Kaji had heard whispers of for years now. Always told in confidence, never spoken in the light. _Vheissu._ A secret so terrible (wonderful?) that the only ones to know the truth were the members of Seele and the Spartan, their keyholder so to speak. Afterall, who could ever get information out of the Spartan?

He vowed to himself among the girls swimming suits, smiling falsely all the while when Asuka exited the changing room and not so subtly tried to flaunt her body at him. _Sorry kid…_ He vowed to find the truth, make it known to the world. Vowed to make it up to Shinji who was _so so so_ alone in the world. To Rei who was, by Kaji's understanding, born and raised to die. To Asuka who for all her bluster was just a scared little girl.

Kaji promised.

* * *

"What do you mean we can't go!" Asuka drew a line from her to the Third Child, using Shinji as leverage against Misato usually worked, but today the woman would not be convinced.

The purple haired woman shook her head again. "We need all pilots on standby in case of an Angel attack, stop being so selfish!"

The German scoffed, "you're calling _me_ selfish? You're the one who wants me to stay in this _godforsaken_ city! It's so boring here, and I've been doing all the shit you've been ordering me to do! I deserve a break!" Asuka turned to the boy standing behind her and yelled, "you! Third Child! Why aren't you speaking up? This is your trip too!"

Shinji looked abashed as he always did in his fellow pilot's presence. "I don't mind… I'm not a good swimmer anyways."

To this the redhead snarled in frustration and grabbed the boy by the shirt collar. "You know what your problem is?" Her face grew dangerously close to Shinji's and he could feel the warmth of her angry breath. "You never stand up for yourself, you just listen to _everything_ everyone says and never _ever_ fight back! You're so—"

A hand, Misato's, grabbed Asuka by the collar and dragged her off. "That's enough," she said sternly, "you both have to stay in Tokyo-3."

"I just bought a new swimming suit!" Asuka's final argument.

"There's a swimming pool at Nerv; besides. Your report cards came in recently…" Misato's tone turned ominous as she addressed both pilots.

Asuka's protests began anew. "That doesn't matter! I already graduated from _college_ if you hadn't noticed," the girl pointed at herself and stood proudly. "That stuff at school is _entry_ level. I did that ages ago."

"You're nearly failing Japanese Literature. The grades in the rest of your classes aren't anything special either," she said matter of factly, "in fact, even Shinji's doing better than you."

Shinji shook his head frantically from behind Asuka, begging Misato not to drag him into the conversation, but it was too late; Asuka had exploded.

"That's only because I can't read the Kanji!" She was yelling now, face turning red as her hair. "I'd be doing a lot better if you Japanese people didn't have such a weird language." No one pointed out that Asuka was herself, half Japanese. "Besides, that doesn't have anything to do with the school trip! Everyone else is going, why can't I?" She was trying to reason now that her miniature tantrum had failed.

"The other kids aren't Eva Pilots," Misato said wryly, "you can use the time to catch up on schoolwork. Both of you could…" she walked away, waving and citing work.

Asuka and Shinji were left alone. The girl angry and the boy nervous.

"We could go swimming after we finish our school work…" he tried to say but Asuka wasn't listening. Her anger was a terrible thing and she stomped away yelling about the injustices of the world.

 _At least John will be here._ Shinji thought to himself as he sat down the circular dining table. The house was so empty at times like this. The afternoon just started, Misato having to work nights, Asuka angry and sulking, Shinji all alone. What could he do?

* * *

John had quickly grown used to the voice in his head. Spending the vast majority of the day in the MJOLNIR had made sure of that. But lately, Cortana, his personal artificial intelligence cum confidant was slowly grating on his nerves.

" _You've got to spend more time with Rei! She's under your care now. Studies show that children who don't spend time with other's will—"_

John interrupted the artificial intelligence, something he rarely did, "you've said as much many times today. Drop it."

Cortana was not dissuaded, " _she's your responsibility! You can't just leave her to do nothing all day."_

"Yes I can. The Commander ordered me to give her a place to live and to make sure she stays loyal; nothing about spending time with her." It wasn't simply that John didn't _want_ to spend time with the blue haired girl, but that he didn't know how to. His apartment (bare and empty, but still _his_ ) had been co-opted by his new roommate; a girl who seemed to have no regard or knowledge of basic social conventions that even the Spartan was aware of. "Don't you remember what happened yesterday?" He asked the A.I.

Cortana didn't respond for a while, but John heard the defeated sigh. " _Yeah… but that's precisely why you have to spend time with her! She doesn't know how to talk to people,"_ Cortana interrupted herself, " _neither do you, but you two… you're living together now and as her senior and caretaker, it's your duty to steer her right._ "

John rounded a corner, "why don't you talk to her if you're so keen on making her more sociable?" He had been called to meet with the Commander, to brief the man on how Ayanami seemed to be adjusting.

" _I'm not human. It's different if a real, flesh and blood person talks to her."_

"You're human enough."

" _It's not the same. You know it's not the same."_

It was John's turn to sigh now. The topic always made him sad: the nature of Cortana's existence. There was something about her… a kind of warmth that was so soothing, a motherly warmth made all the more strong by their bond forged on battlefields the world around. They were the perfect pair. The invincible soldier and the quite literally the most intelligent persona (not person) to exist. Cortana and John, John and Cortana.

"You're more real than anyone Cortana," he said quietly.

" _It's wrong to think like that. I might be talking to you right now, and it might seem like I have emotion's John. It might seem like I can feel to the same degree anyone else could… but it's fake. It's all fake. Sophistry. I'm no more human than the average computer."_

John had nothing to say to that. His best friend, not really a friend by her own admission, merely a tool. An excellent tool, like a key capable of opening any lock, but a tool nonetheless. And she'd never be human, forever trapped by her prison of circuits and code. Numbers and letters more secure than any jail. Cortana would never be free, never be anything more than a voice in John's head. It was sad.

"Cortana, are you okay?" John asked.

The A.I. made a sound like a sigh, infinitely large in the confines of John's helmet.

" _That's what I'm talking about. You have this notion that I can feel as a human being does. It's different John."_

John knew it was different, but he wished he didn't. Of course the A.I. couldn't _feel._ The rational side of John's brain knew that. To feel required a soul. The most painful truth he held, more so than all of Seele's secrets he had learned while either doing their will or bodyguarding the men of power, the most painful truth was knowing that Cortana, his greatest friend and closest confidant, could not feel. Could _never_ feel. She had no soul. She was born of machine and from the tap-tap-tapping fingers of some virtuoso computer programmer.

" _Anything I say, do, think; that's what I'm programmed to do. You know this. You know why I was given to you."_

John nodded. Not out of agreement, but of acceptance. He didn't particularly care to have an extended conversation; especially about on this topic in particular.

" _I want you to go talk to Rei after you're done here,"_ said Cortana.

So distracted John was by the conversation, he barely recognized that he had arrived at his destination. An armoring dock, specifically for him. He entered the large room stepped on to an elevated platform, a mechanical rig surrounding him. Instantly, technicians who had been on standby swarmed him and gingerly removed the MJOLNIR. The helmet was last to go, and John stored Cortana's suggestion in his mind and passed the heavy headpiece to the nearest technician.

John breathed deeply, so long he had been in the suit that normal, unfiltered air tasted strange. It was noticeably cooler in the room, and much lonelier without Cortana. He began to peel the skin tight black suit that helped interface with the rest of his armor. A technician near him passed him a white shirt, looking torn between fear and awe as the scars of John's body came into clear view; but the Spartan didn't mind the staring. He had grown used to it long ago.

 _Time to find Ayanami..._

* * *

Loyalty and secrets, Gendo had decided, were the topics of the day. He spoke with Fuyutsuki within the darkness of his office room.

"Do you believe our efforts to be succeeding? Will the First Child continue to obey?" The Commander asked, face obscured by shadow.

Fuyutsuki was standing across from the man, "I don't understand why it is necessary, Rei has shown herself to be loyal without a fault; perhaps to a higher degree than even the Spartan."

Gendo shook his head, but very little could be seen in behind his veil of dark. "His loyalty has been compromised by Seele. _Cortana_ , as the A.I. has been named, will undoubtedly influence the Spartan to support Seele should they make a move."

Fuyutsuki wanted to disagree, but kept his lips pursed for the moment. He had seen the details of what Seele had done with Halsey's soul… disgusting, completely unethical, and absolutely tragic. The poor woman, who had held the grand aspiration of pushing humanity to the next step of existence… poisoned, soul harvested, body burnt hours later. Fuyutsuki mentally thanked whatever God was watching over the world that the Spartan was still ignorant of the details of Halsey's death, and prayed that John never find out. But the soul. Halsey's immortal soul lived on, even if the Spartan was unaware of it. Cortana wasn't truly an _artificial_ intelligence. It was more accurate to call her an imprinting of Halsey's soul shackled to this reality by machines and chemicals and an artificial A.T Field. But no one would know that. No one on earth understood the architecture of the soul as Fuyutsuki did.

"Ikari," the old man finally intoned, "I do believe it to be impossible for Seele to have tampered with Halsey's soul."

"Explain," the Commander's tone brokered no compromise.

"When a human being dies, their soul leaves instantaneously for the higher plain," the old man gestured to the ceiling and continued, "how Seele claims to have captured the soul… they are lying. Or more accurately, it cannot be true. It is impossible for _man_ to trap a soul within a machine."

Gendo didn't agree. "But it has been done. Yui is in Unit-01. Naoko Akagi resides in the Magi. Halsey has become Cortana. You're theories are wrong."

The old man shook his head, "you misunderstand each case. Akagi's _soul_ is not in the Magi, she merely copied her thought patterns. A subtle but important difference," he was lecturing now, a holdover from his days as a teacher. "Yui is willingly in Unit-01, remember that," Gendo's gloved hands tightened imperceptibly, "and Halsey… I believe that Seele has the capability to generate an A.T Field."

Gendo frowned, "the Evangelion are the only machines capable of generating Absolute Terror; Seele does not have a functional Evangelion _or_ a Pilot."

A shrug came from the older man, "I do not pretend to know the exacting details of Seele's capabilities; but there is no other way. Halsey would not have willingly become Cortana; she was too engrossed in the Spartan-IV project, and she never agreed with the idea of Instrumentality in the first place. She would never willingly do Seele's bidding."

"Then how could they have created Cortana?"

"Do you know what happens when you die?" Fuyutsuki asked.

The Commander seemed annoyed, "cease with the philosophizing. Get to the point."

"The question is relevant. Do you know what happens?"

Gendo shook his head and leaned forward, out of the shadows.

"At the very moment of death… the soul leaves the body immediately. There is no material in the world that can stop it. It cannot be measured but for our knowledge that is _does_ happen."

"Then how would Seele trap Halsey's soul?"

"The only way to forcibly stop a soul from moving onto the next plane of existence is with another soul; an A.T Field. _Somehow_ Seele acquired the capability to produce Absolute Terror. They killed Halsey, and prior to her death, extended an A.T Field around her. Once the soul exited the body, it was a simple enough matter to take the soul and bind it, A.T Field and all, to the chip that John now has."

There was quiet for a moment as Gendo took it all in and the two sat there, thinking and plotting.

"It makes no difference then. The Spartan's loyalty is no longer purs."

"Where then does his loyalty then lie?"

"With Halsey," the Commander said,

* * *

Shinji sat at poolside, trying his hardest not to stare. Asuka was in the pool, swimming, playing alone. A tempting sight for sure, but with it came the promise of pain… Still, physics was difficult and dull, Asuka was glistening in the water, the light glinting off the soft curve of her shoulders… her hair at places stuck to her creamy white skin, at others floating, drifting on the water's surface; a corona of red.

He shook his head of improper thoughts; sitting in the flimsy beach chair was uncomfortable as is. "Let's see… thermal expansion…" he had gone over this with John in the past, during his lessons, but he couldn't quite recall the principle. So engrossed was he with his laptop and worksheet that he did not hear the figure approaching him from behind.

There was a wet swish through the air as a towel, rolled up into a thick rope, was swung towards Shinji's head. There was pain and Shinji fell from his seat, knocking over the table in the process and splaying his schoolwork onto the damp ground, where it wicked up moisture, making the ink run and the words turn illegible.

"Ha! I got you!" It was Asuka, standing over Shinji, still dripping water from her time in the pool. "You have to be more alert Third Child! A Pilot of Eva should never be unprepared!"

Shinji rubbed the base of his neck where the wet towel had hit him and turned to his attacker. "Ow… Hi Asuka," he waved weakly at her smirking face.

"What're you studying?" The girl leaned over his shoulder, bare skin and wet swimsuit ever so close to the stammering boy.

"Physics…"

Asuka bounced back up, standing straight as Shinji picked himself off the floor and straightened his study materials and laptop. Thankfully the device had not broken.

"You're joking right?" She paused for a moment, smug, "you're lucky I majored in physics while I was at Heidelberg. What's the question asking?"

Shinji had forgotten that she couldn't read Kanji well and so explained, "it's about thermal expansion. I know the concept, but the cal—"

The redhead laughed and stared incredulously at Shinji, "that's so easy! Thermal expansion is just what it sounds like; something gets hot, it gets bigger. If it gets cold, it shrinks," a thought appeared in her head and she smiled evilly. "Hey Shinji?" Asuka cupped her breasts and rubbed, sending Shinji into various stages of awkward staring and looking away. "You think my boobs would get bigger if I rubbed them?" She asked.

Shinji's chair fell to the ground again as the boy stood and backpedaled. "I wouldn't know anything about that!" He yelled and closed his eyes, face feeling awfully hot.

Asuka frowned and turned away, walking back to the swimming pool. "You're so boring Third Child…" leaving Shinji alone and flustered.

Embarrassed and not wanting to be called a pervert, Shinji looked at the other swimming pool, currently occupied by Ayanami, who was doing a smooth freestyle stroke at a leisurely pace. Somewhere behind him a door opened and he turned to see who it was, ignoring Asuka's cries for attention.

"John!" Shinji smiled and waved. It had been several days since the two had last met.

The Spartan gave him a curt nod in reply, "Shinji," he asked, "what are you doing here?"

"Just doing some schoolwork. The others are swimming," the fourteen year old gestured to Rei and Asuka, both unaware of John's arrival. Speaking of Asuka, Shinji remembered something she had told him shortly after their first meeting. "Asuka! I have someone to show you!"

John had a strange expression caught between panic and confusion, "Shinji, you don't need to call her here. In fact, it's better that you don't." Without his armor, Asuka would likely recognize him even after the decade since their disastrous first meeting.

But Shinji was having none of it. "Asuka said she really wanted to see what you looked like… it's not like she could just walk up to you and ask."

The Spartan looked torn between leaving and staying here, confronting his past. "She's seen me without my helmet on before. A long time ago."

"It's not so bad that she see you again then, right?" Shinji pleaded, something he rarely did, "please stay. She's really nice once you get to know her!" A blatant half-truth. While Asuka could be endearing when she wanted to, much of the time she was rather nasty. But Shinji loved that all the same. Brave, Asuka. A confident and headstrong girl, with beauty and smarts to match; everything that Shinji was not. That was why he _had_ to at least show her that he could do something. Even if it was as small as introducing her to John on a more friendly level.

John grimaced and prayed to God that Asuka not remember him. Unlikely though. According to Kaji, the girl still had nightmares about the day she had watched him murder those soldiers. Trauma was never easily forgotten. Scars never fully healed. His own body was a testament to that.

"What do you want _Third Child?_ I was swimming, couldn't you call me over—" the German girl froze in her approach. " _Gott in Himmel…_ It's you…"

"Asuka?" Shinji asked, "what's wrong? Is everything alright?" He looked worried, a crease formed between his eyebrows. He stepped toward John and grabbed him by the arm to begin his introduction, "you two have already met before but—"

"Get away from him!" Asuka yelled. The noise echoed around the vast swimming room in a cacophony of dissention; as if the world itself was ordering Shinji to step away. "That man," she was pointing at John now, finger quivering, lips trembling, trying to keep a brave face on. "That man is a _murderer_."

Shinji's confusion only grew as Asuka began to become frenzied in her shaking, "Asuka… that's John, the Spartan remember? He's a soldier so it's kind of his job to…" A hand came to rest on his shoulder and Shinji looked up to see John shaking his head from side to side. The Spartan began to walk away, slowly, not wanting to deal with the situation. He had never been the best at dealing with children anyways.

"Wait John! Come back! Tell me what happened…" Shinji's pleas were unanswered. The man didn't even turn back. He turned to Asuka, who had picked up a chair from nearby. She began to run. "Wait, don't do that!" But Asuka was swinging a chair; Shinji could not stop her as she rushed the Spartan, aiming the metal folding chair high above her head.

"You fucking murderer," she was closing the distance quickly, footsteps violent against the floor. The signs instructing pool-goers to walk instead of run were ignored. "Never come back!" She had reached him and the chair was swung in earnest, the end of a leg poised to cave in John's skull.

Retaliation was swift and brutal and Asuka had flashbacks to the day, that terrible day where two men had died over nothing in a boxing ring halfway across the world. _A punch to the gut_. Asuka felt it. The pain. Liver compacted, nerves twitching rapid fire. The chair dropped to the floor at some point, but it did not register. She folded in half and began to sink to her knees, crying and out of breath. Something grabbed her by the hair, holding by the tips to maximize pain.

Asuka had been lifted into the air to the point that she was face to face with an extremely angry Spartan. "Those men… those men… I couldn't help it. You don't understand what it was like after the surgery… _Everyone_ — _every single one_ of the other Spartans— people I grew up with—they were _gone_ ," a sad exhalation filled the room for a small moment. "I promised them. Each and everyone of them I promised that _they would make it._ " He let go of the fistful of red hair and Asuka crumpled to the floor.

The room was silent save for the lapping of water and the terrible echo of anger. Shinji stood to the side, watching, afraid of the discourse between Asuka and John. Rei exited the water having been disrupted by the yelling, a look of puzzlement on her face.

"It doesn't matter how you felt! You _killed_ those men over _nothing_. Words. All they did was say shit! And you killed them!" Asuka climbed back to her feet, voice growing in both pitch and volume as she stood taller, "just stay away from me! _Fucking freak_ ," she spat the last words out while she brushed herself off, staring defiantly even in her defeat.

A moment passed, tense and fraught with danger. Shinji saw the look in John's eyes, the tenseness of his jaw, the way the veins and muscles in his throat popped with movement from each and every heavy heartbeat and thought for a split-second that the Spartan was ready for murder.

But he worried for nothing. John swallowed his pride, eyes glaring fire and brimstone and walked away from Asuka who still stood tall and haughty.

Not a word was said until John had left the swimming room.

"Asuka…" Shinji began, but was interrupted.

"Not another word _Third Child_ ," she snapped, "I don't want to hear it." The girl spun on her heel and made for the pool again.

He didn't know how to respond. Just what had happened between the two? Asuka had never given any signs of having known John prior to the day on the sea; so why would she be so angry today? He turned to Rei.

"Ayanami, do you know what's going on?" He asked, pleaded.

Rei shook her head. She had been silent through this whole exchange. "I do not know precisely what took place between the two. But I believe Pilot Soryu was referring to a time where the Master Chief killed two men and severely injured two others."

"Do you mean like normal people?" Shinji glanced over at Asuka, who was furiously swimming, her arms churning the water, bringing up white froth to the surface. "He's a soldier, he probably kills people all the time…" he finished quite morosely.

Rei thought for a moment. "Yes, I believe the men in question were off-duty soldiers. An altercation over a few choice words led to a fight. The fight led to two dead men."

What could have been so terrible to drive the Chief to murder? He hadn't been able to hear much of the conversation between Asuka and John; but he knew that the Spartan was superbly composed and calm in almost all situations. Incidents that would have driven most people to anger didn't even seem to phase him.

"When was this?"

"Six years have passed. I do not know how Pilot Soryu obtained this knowledge; the incident was to have been suppressed."

Time to find out why...

* * *

Gendo sat in his room, a light beside him was lit casting shadows across his desk. In front of him an orange envelope, stamped with the words TOP SECRET. He held a small book in his hands. Leatherbound, yellowing pages sewn together and covered in old black ink, fading. The journal of one Evan Goldolphin, a relic from the Second World War. The memoir of a British pilot to stumble on mankind's greatest secret, Vheissu.

It had been incredibly difficult to obtain the journal. Rome, the first Rome, along with much of the Italian peninsula had been submerged after Second Impact. The journal had lain hidden in the Vatican vault for the better part of a century, unread and untouched. It had been recovered quite recently by explorers along with surviving artworks, masterpieces by men whose names had been immortalized through pigment and stone.

Vheissu. Gendo began to read. The majority of the pages were of the mundane, everyday routine that the pilot had gone through. Goldolphin's exploits as a pilot. The women he had bedded. The places he had traveled to and the sights he had seen. All very interesting, but now was not the time.

 _May 14, 1938_

 _Crash landed behind enemy lines, no severe injuries. Am in Italy. More specifically the island of Pompeii. Mostly uninjured. Low on supplies. Believe local and military to come investigate shortly. Must hide…_

 _Evening now, the sun is setting. I heard them nearby. Searching with dogs and flashlights. The smell of burning oil has saved me. Masked my scent perfectly. I am moving toward the summit of a mountain now. I believe it is Vesuvius; the locals probably will not follow. Superstitious lot, these Italians._

 _Tree cover is beginning to fade. Must make it to crater immediately. Should be able to hide there. Probably warm too…_

The journal went on, describing the environment and the details of his crash; all things Gendo did not care about.

 _May 15, 1938_

 _Came close to being caught. Dog almost sniffed me out. Very close to crater now. Was able to catch food; a strange monkey. Six limbs and colored like a rainbow. Maybe I hit my head during the crash… No matter. Had to eat the beast raw. Did not have opportunity to make fire. My pursuers are still here; but they seem to be flagging. Might be that I survive after all._

 _Running low on water in my canteen though._

A large portion of the text here was illegible, covered in a dark brown stain.

 _Another monkey. This one was hostile. Bite me on the arm before I was able to kill it with my knife. Must be more careful. Second monkey just as good as first. Pursuers seem to have left. Must not be too dedicated these Italians._

 _Night time, but I have reached the crater. Am currently sleeping next to a boulder. It is warm here and I have found a pool of water near by. Tastes like sulphur but I will manage. Monkey population has become much more apparent. Not aggressive at all. All they do is watch. Strange how they are of so many different colors… God truly is above human understanding._

 _May 17, 1938_

 _Yesterday uneventful. Killed another monkey. They do not run from my presence, I don't think these chaps have ever been near a human being. May have discovered a new species! Exciting thought._

 _I've found something though. A shovel. Fairly new, rust only beginning to form. Probably a few months old. Large letter V. stenciled to the head. Was not expecting human artifact here. Might not be as isolated as I thought… Must look for better hiding spot._

There it was. The _V_. _V_ for Vheissu. Gendo read on, dreadful excitement filling him.

 _May 18, 1938_

 _Monkey's have been following me. These chaps are quite quiet; much more so than you would expect from an animal. Guess Kipling was wrong about them. They show an odd reverence when around me. Never do they get in my way. Always flanking me._

 _The ground feels odd. Almost as if I'm walking on something hollow. Not the best thought when on a volcano. Confident that there is no danger of falling through. Dug a four foot deep hole with the shovel I found. No magma. Only earth._

 _Beginning to feel quite guilty about killing these monkeys. They never struggle. The other monkeys only stare. When I butcher my meal for the day, some hoot and dance. Sound almost happy? I don't understand. Animals have no empathy, I suppose._

 _May 19, 1938_

 _I am not alone. Found footprints. I've been walking just below the edge of the crater. And there they were, just behind a boulder. The crater is huge, will probably take me several hours to cross the whole thing. Sadly there are many boulders and other such obstacles. Cut my trouser leg on a jagged rock of black glass. Obsidian I believe it is called._

 _May 20, 1938_

 _Breakthrough. A hatch, like the ones you have on submarines. Thoughts from yesterday led me to try walking across the crater today. Around two hours in, I hit something. I'm using the shovel as a walking stick. The sound of metal on metal was so strange after all these days._

 _Monkeys are still following me. I don't know what to do. Should I open it? What could possible be underneath?_

 _Night now. I am sleeping near the hatch today, just in case I hear any noises. People inside are probably Italians; but I am a pilot. Will probably be afforded a certain degree of gentleman's courtesy if captured. I would very much like a wash. I smell like dirt and sulphur; a most awful combination._

 _Monkeys are very close tonight. They look different. Almost anxious. Keep opening their mouths like they're yawning. Funny little fellow aren't they? Perhaps I'll try and draw one once I try the hatch tomorrow._

 _May 21, 1938_

 _Going to try the hatch this morning_

It ended there. The same dark brown stain that had obscured a previous page in the journal was the only continuation. What had been behind that door?

Gendo pounded the table in frustration. He had been _so_ close to Vheissu. But the secret would not yield itself so easily.

 **AN: This chapter took a long time to write. Did two chapters of a new fanfic I'm writing. Also about Evangelion. Set in the Fallout universe, not really a crossover.**

 **Israfel beaten as per canon. No differences there, no reason to write it.**

 **So here we have Asuka finally find out who John is. I am pretty unsatisfied with that scene. I think I could have made it much more emotional. Probably will be rewritten when I have time.**

 **The journal sequence I hope wasn't too boring. Vheissu will be revealed in due time.**

 **Finally explaining what happened with Halsey. Before she died, an A.T. Field was placed around her body; and as far as we know only an A.T. Field can cancel out another A.T. Field. When Halsey was murdered in hopes of creating an Evangelion unit for John, they made sure that her soul would not escape by using the A.T. Field. After that, through some technological wizardry, they applied Halsey's soul and bound it to an uploaded version of her brain. Think of the Magi if they had real souls, not just imprints of Naoko Akagi's personality. As far as anyone besides The Nerv higher ups and Seele, Cortana is a real A.I. as in made through coding and such.**

 **Although Cortana could potentially hack the sealed records and find out the truth about** _ **everything**_ **, and by proxy tell John; she doesn't even know that these secrets exist. She doesn't even have a real reason to pry into classified information anyhow. That would just cause more problems for John.**

 **Thank's for reading. Hope you enjoy.**


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